Meng named UB Distinguished Professor

Hui Meng, professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has been named a UB Distinguished Professor.

The UB Distinguished Professor designation — not to be confused with the SUNY Distinguished Professor designation, a rank above that of full professor awarded by the SUNY trustees — was created by the Office of the Provost to recognize full professors who have achieved true distinction and are leaders in their fields.

It is open to faculty members who have been a full professor for at least five years and who have achieved national or international prominence and a distinguished reputation within their field through significant contributions to the research/scholarly literature or through artistic performance or achievement in the fine arts.

A UB faculty member since 1999, Meng is an internationally renowned expert and leader in two distinct fields: experimental fluid mechanics and cerebral aneurysm and hemodynamics. Originally recruited to UB to join the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, she also was named a research professor in the Department of Neurosurgery in 2004 and an adjunct professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2010 so that she could pursue work that would have a more direct impact on improving human health.

Since then, she has made what colleagues in the biomedical sciences call “significant and profound” contributions in cerebral aneurysm research, in addition to continuing groundbreaking work in her original scholarly field of experimental fluid mechanics and turbulence.

Meng’s work in the biomedical engineering field has provided the foundation for efforts to improve diagnostics, early detection, surgical management and treatment of brain aneurysms, and is credited by colleagues with opening new pathways to improving minimally invasive treatments, such as flow-modification therapies.

She also has leveraged her cross-disciplinary training in optics and mechanical engineering to pioneer the development of volumetric whole-field measurement of turbulent flow using holography, which has significantly advanced our ability to understand, model and control turbulent and other complex flows.

Meng’s research has received more than $17 million in funding from major national organizations, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

She is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and a co-founder of Neurovascular Diagnostics Inc., a startup company that is developing a blood test for detecting unruptured brain aneurysms, an advance that could save lives by enabling doctors to identify and provide preventative treatment to patients who have such aneurysms but exhibit no symptoms.

Among her numerous honors is a UB Exceptional Scholar Award Sustained Achievement Award, which recognizes a researcher’s work that has “garnered public and/or professional accolades beyond the norm,” and a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.