U-M Regents Promote CEE Professors Wigginton & Scruggs
Professors Krista Wigginton and Jeffrey Scruggs have been elevated to full professors with tenure, a move that acknowledges their important research and commitment to education
On May 16th, 2024, the University of Michigan Board of Regents approved CEE Associate Professors Krista Wigginton and Jeffrey Scruggs for promotion to full Professors with tenure. The promotion comes after each professor received a recommendation for promotion from Interim Dean of Engineering Steven Ceccio on the basis of their outstanding achievements as researchers and educators.
Professor Wigginton first came to the University of Michigan in 2011 following time spent as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland and as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. She obtained a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Idaho and her Environmental Engineering M.S. and Ph.D. at Virginia Tech. In her time as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, Professor Wigginton has taught undergraduate engineering courses such as CEE 365 (Principles of Environmental Engineering) and CEE 465 (Water Process Engineering). She created her graduate-level class CEE 597 (Environmental Organic Chemistry) and is known by her students as an approachable, knowledgeable and respectful educator who enhances student learning through the incorporation of real-world experiences. Professor Wigginton has chaired or co-chaired 13 Ph.D. students’ dissertations and advised 13 master’s students,18 undergraduate students, six postdoctoral scholars and a current research scientist. She is also a valuable researcher, and her work focuses on the detection, removal, and fate of contaminants in the environment with an emphasis on viruses. Her work on detecting coronaviruses in treated wastewater led to her playing a leading role in the development of methods used globally in wastewater-based epidemiology during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Professor Jeffrey Scruggs obtained his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and his M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech, then going on to obtain a second M.S. and a Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics at the California Institute of Technology. Professor Scruggs came to the University of Michigan in 2011 following an Assistant Professor position at Duke University as well as time spent as a Visiting Scholar and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California San Diego and the California Institute of Technology, respectively. As an educator, Professor Scruggs is praised for his teaching style and mentoring by undergraduate and graduate students alike. He helped to shape the UM-CEE curriculum by spearheading the development of the Intelligent Systems Graduate Program, which placed the CEE Department in a position to produce the next generation of leaders in the field. He has chaired or co-chaired five Ph.D. students’ dissertations with another three in progress. Professor Scruggs is a national and international expert in Intelligent Systems. His current research areas in control of ocean wave energy conversion, self-powered cyber-physical systems and vibratory systems with stroke control are very timely, and his new directions in self-powered robotics, hybrid energy storage and control of transportation networks are well integrated into the strategic directions of the department, the college and the university.
Congratulations to Professors Wigginton and Scruggs for their promotions!
MEDIA CONTACT
Mason Hinawi
Marketing Communications Specialist
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering