Dr. Seyed Allameh never envisioned himself as a professor.  

It wasn’t until 2004 when he was invited to join Northern Kentucky University as an engineering technology faculty member that he changed his mind.

Dr. Allameh, who previously worked at Wayne State University, Ohio State University and Princeton University, says nothing has left on impression him like NKU has.

“NKU is a pleasant place to work,” he says. “If you go to other places, there's a lot of competition and fights over resources and students. Here, people care for each other and help each other. Class sizes are small, and you work with students on a closer level.”

With a background in material science, Dr. Allameh has completed plenty of research in the engineering field. However, he doesn’t consider research a solo activity.

Dr. Allameh works with NKU students in the lab on campus and outside the classroom every semester to provide them as many research experiences as possible—whether it’s creating 3D welded rebar or using artificial intelligence to make a humanoid robot move and learn to recognize people.

“When you talk about research, you're talking about exploring the unknown. Developmental work is kind of between a routine job and research. So there's a little bit of research and there's a little bit of hands-on things that go with it,” he says. “Research is trying to reach the unknown. You may reach it, or you may not. You must have a lot of patience and perseverance when you do research because you don't know what the end would be. When we do research, I tell my students, ‘Look, we are looking for something that has not been done before.’”

Three of Dr. Allameh’s students joined him on a project that recently received $5,000 in funding from Kentucky Commercialization Ventures to create autonomous modular platforms for urban transportation.

Since his arrival in 2004, he has included his students in his work as much as possible. But his philosophy goes beyond just teaching them and providing them with research experiences. Dr. Allameh truly wants them to succeed in all areas of their lives.

“I had been helped with my faculty, my directors or bosses and so on to get here. And I'm trying to do the same with my students,” he says. “I’m trying to be available to them and trying to find co-op jobs for them or getting assistance for them. I try to tell them that they should do the same with other people. It's important to not only be able to get help but also to help others.”

When Dr. Allameh first arrived on campus more than two decades ago, things looked a little different—small programs and less resources.

However, looking ahead, he sees nothing but growth for the department and its students.

“With the new building, new labs and better partnership within the industry, we are trying to reach that goal of providing the best education and providing more co-op opportunities. This way, students combine creativity with engineering and get theoretical background and all the concepts here. Then, they go into the industry and get all the tricks of the trade—the real hands-on experience—over there, combining the two,” he says. “By the time that they graduate, they have more impact because now they are four years or three years ahead of their time, as opposed to someone at entry level who has seen nothing. All of a sudden, the diploma goes higher. That's my hope. We have a dean who is very passionate about this. Our chair, our provost, our president are very much into making the whole university move in the direction of innovation and providing better education and better opportunities for our students and better care.”