The department is pleased to announce the recent promotions of two of its research faculty, Cigdem Keles and Kaiwu Huang. “I'm so grateful for the many contributions that Dr. Keles and Dr. Huang have made to our department, and I look forward to continuing our work together,” said Kray Luxbacher, Charles T. Holland Professor and Department Head.

Dr. Cigdem Keles

Cigdem Keles, Senior Research Associate

Cigdem Keles has been promoted to Senior Research Associate in the mining and minerals engineering department. Keles has taught courses in the department and has made substantial research contributions in the areas of respirable coal mine dust and its health effects, as well as carbon sequestration and unconventional gas engineering.

Keles joined the department in 2011, serving first as a postdoctoral associate under Dr. Michael Karmis in the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research (VCCER), where she developed expertise in coalbed methane and shale gas reservoir modeling and simulation.

Proficient in various software related to reservoir simulation and geomechanics, Keles’ modeling work included sensitivity analyses to enhance gas recovery, history-matching studies to estimate reservoir parameters, and modeling different gas production and carbon dioxide injection scenarios to enhance gas production.

In 2015 she was appointed research associate and began supporting the efforts of department associate professor Emily Sarver’s Dust Research Group. In this capacity, Keles’ responsibilities included the development of analytical techniques for respirable dust characterization, interpreting dust data, training researchers and graduate students on the thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and polarized light microscopy (PLM). Keles has been responsible for mentoring graduate and undergraduate researchers with their lab work, and she has taught the department’s Elements of Mine Design course.

She has been involved in numerous research projects with grants and funding totaling over $11.5 million. Currently she is serving as co-principal investigator on a recently awarded Alpha Foundation grant titled “Exploration of Temporal Changes in Respirable Coal Mine Dust Characteristics.” Her scholarly work includes more than 15 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers as author or co-author, numerous poster awards and presentations, and presentations at conferences and professional meetings.

Keles earned her B.S. (2003), M.S. (2006), and Ph.D. (2010) degrees from the Middle East Technical University in Anakara, Turkey, and is an active member of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration, the Society of Mining Professors, and the Society for Petroleum Engineers.

Dr. Kaiwu Huang

Kaiwu Huang, Research Assoicate

Kaiwu Huang has been promoted from Post Doctoral Associate to Research Associate. Dr. Huang works closely with the Center for Advanced Separation Technology in the area of mineral processing, and he has also contributed to teaching undergraduate mineral processing courses.

Huang earned a B.S. degree in mineral processing engineering, with the distinction of highest G.P.A, in 2013 from the China University of Mining and Technology in Beijing. After this he enrolled at Virginia Tech to pursue his M.S. (2015) and Ph.D. (2019) degrees in Mining Engineering, both under the advisership of Roe-Hoan Yoon, department Camicia Professor and University Distinguished Professor. In 2020 Huang joined the department as a postdoctoral associate.

Huang has demonstrated expertise in flotation, colloid and surface chemistry, thermodynamics, and process simulation. His research interests include flotation modelling, coal beneficiation, dewatering modelling, surface forces in thin liquid films (TLFs), and hydrophobic interactions.

As a postdoctoral associate, Huang contributed to numerous projects carried out by the Center for Advanced Separation Technologies (CAST). Among his many accomplishments is the development of a specially designed surface force apparatus that can measure surface forces in the thin liquid films confined between bubbles or oil drops and mineral surfaces. He is also responsible for the development of a model-based flotation simulator.

In 2020 Huang’s research in flotation kinetics was recognized for its “exceptional scientific importance” by the journal Advances In Engineering.

In addition to his substantial research contributions, Huang has taught or assisted with several courses in the department, to include Resource Recovery, Fundamentals of Mineral Processing, and Advanced Mineral Processing. He has six journal papers and four conference papers to his credit, and he was the recipient of the department’s 2019 Outstanding Graduate Student Award and SME’s 2019 Authur F. Taggart Award. He recently served as the Technical Committee Vice-Chair for the SME Industrial Minerals and Aggregates Division.