Flagship Constellations

The University of Mississippi

Greg Easson

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Greg EassonGreg Easson is the director of the Mississippi Mineral Resources Institute and associate dean for Research and Graduate Education in the School of Engineering. He has been a faculty member in the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering since 1995 and holds that rank of professor.

Easson has taught a wide range of academic courses throughout his tenure at the university, from introductory geology to advanced remote sensing. His area of research includes the application of remotely sensed data for natural resources issues and questions. One of the key disaster-related activities in Easson’s career was being part of a team of volunteers from universities in Mississippi that provided voluntary GIS support in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Easson is currently involved with research into the resilience of the natural communities on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the use of remote sensing to improve the early onset of drought throughout the world.

Chris Mullen

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Chris Mullen is an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Mississippi where he served three years as interim department chair. He earned his Ph.D. at Princeton University, master’s of civil engineering at Rice University, preceptorship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and bachelor’s of civil engineering at Rice. Before earning his Ph.D., Mullen worked five years at Mobil Research and Development Corp. in the Offshore Engineering Division — two years of which were spent with Mobil Exploration and Producing Southeast Morgan City field office. He then joined the consulting firm ADAPCO Inc. as an FE analyst and later WAI as a bridge engineer.

Mullen has served UM for over 20 years, conducting research projects for the U.S. Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, Department of Homeland Security (Science and Technology and FEMA), the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and the Mississippi Department of Transportation; publishing widely in archival journals and conference proceedings; and engaging in professional service through consulting in bridge collapse investigations, appointment on the state Earthquake Advisory Council and peer review of state Mitigation Plan updates and hurricane mitigation insurance incentives. He has advised numerous doctoral and master’s students and upperclassmen, and taught courses on engineering and structural mechanics, steel design, pre-stressed concrete design, civil engineering design, finite element analysis, multihazard analysis and design, and response of structures to extreme loading.

He has served the state in a variety of outreach capacities, co-founding the UM Center for Community Earthquake Preparedness and co-writing the first earthquake component of the state and UM campus Mitigation Plans. He served in the emergency operations center during Hurricanes Dennis and Katrina then as Mississippi representative on the FEMA Mitigation Assessment Team. He joined the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1978 and has served as chair of the SEI Methods of Analysis technical committee, associate editor for the Journal of Structural Engineering and as a member of the EMI Objective Resilience technical committee. He has been a member of the NIBS Multihazard Mitigation Council and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. He recently participated in offering the first EMI Objective Resilience Short Course at Tongji University.

James Rowlett

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James Rowlett, Ph.D., is a professor and vice chair for research in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Rowlett’s research program studies the mechanisms underlying drug abuse and dependence, particularly sedative-anxiolytic and stimulant addiction; and cognitive processes as a consequence of aging and metabolic function. The lab studies the pharmacological basis of drug abuse and cognitive processes using in vivo techniques, including self-administration and complex behavior controlled by touch-screen technology. A key component of the research program is a focus on translational drug discovery, with a long-standing goal of providing important information for discovery and development of anti-addiction, anxiolytic, sleep-aid and cognitive-enhancing medications.

Rowlett is currently the principal investigator for two National Institutes of Health R01 grants: one examining anxiolytic effects and abuse of benzodiazepine receptor ligands, and another to study tolerance and physical dependence after chronic benzodiazepine treatment.

In 2018, Rowlett was recognized with the UM Medical Center’s Platinum Medallion for excellence in research, granted to faculty who obtain $5 million in extramural research funding.

Rowlett holds a secondary appointment in the UM Medical Center’s Department of Neurobiology and Anatomical Sciences and advises students in the Ph.D. in Neuroscience program. He also is a member of the Neuro Institute, an initiative to integrate high-quality health care, groundbreaking research and innovative educational programs within the field of neuroscience.

Rowlett earned his B.S. in psychology at Morehead State University and Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Kentucky. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the UM Medical Center and then joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School. Rowlett returned to the UM Medical Center as a full professor in 2013.

Robert Hester

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Dr. Robert Hester is professor and interim chair of the Department of Data Sciences at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. He joined UMMC in 1985 after completing his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering jointly from Mississippi State University and the University of Mississippi Medical Center, following by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia. Dr. Hester’s current research focus is continuing the computational simulation of human physiology started by Drs. Guyton and Coleman in the 1970s. He is leading the development of HumMod and other integrative physiological models for understanding human physiology and the development of in silico clinical trials.

Cesar Rego

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Cesar Rego holds a full professor appointment at the School of Business of the University of Mississippi. He received his first degree in computer science and applied mathematics from Portucalense University in 1990, a master of science in operations research and systems engineering from the Institute of Technology of the University of Lisbon in 1993 and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Versailles in 1996. He also was awarded an Habilitation (post-doctorate degree) from the University of Versailles in 2012.

Professor Rego has held permanent faculty appointments at Portucalense University and the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, and visiting professor appointments at the Institute of Technology of the University of Lisbon and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.

His research focuses on mathematical optimization, predictive and prescriptive analytics, and high-performance computing. Rego’s publications have appeared in books and in leading journals on optimization such as the European Journal of Operational Research, the Journal of the Operational Research Society, Parallel Computing, Computers & OR, Computers & IE, Annals of OR, IEEE Intelligent Systems, OR Spectrum, Applied Soft Computing, Journal of Heuristics, Networks, and Management Science.

Rego has served on several scientific committees, including a review panel for the National Science Foundation, and the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and also has served as examiner on several doctoral dissertations in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. He has organized and chaired numerous sessions and clusters in international conferences, and has served as an invited speaker in numerous tutorials and plenary sessions.