Thanks to the generous support of Stanley and Karen Pigman and Kentucky’s Research Challenge Trust Fund (RCTF), engineering researchers are receiving additional annual funding to enhance the research priorities and programs of the Pigman College of Engineering. Established in 2024, the Lighthouse Beacon Foundation Endowment supports faculty, research, graduate students, facilities and research infrastructure in the Pigman College of Engineering. This year, the endowment made $235,000 in funds available for distribution.
Simone Silvestri, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Computer Science in the Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, is part of a research team that has been awarded a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to answer that very question.
Alumnus Nathaniel Hudson was awarded the Torch of Excellence Award alongside current graduate student, Joshna Kurra, who received the Torch Bearer Award.
This month, the University of Kentucky Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering welcomed seven new members to its faculty. Brooks Lane, assistant professor in the F. Joseph Halcomb III, M.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering Lane earned his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 2019 and most recently served as a postdoctoral fellow at Drexel University. His research interests are:
Six Pigman College of Engineering faculty members received National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards, the Foundation's prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty, in the 2025 funding cycle. This year, the Pigman College of Engineering recorded its highest number of NSF CAREER awardees in the 30-year history of the program. In addition, the college boasted a 75% success rate for CAREER awards in the 2025 funding cycle.
Dr. W. Brent Seales, Stanley and Karen Pigman Chair of Heritage Science and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky will be presenting "On Perseverance: Virtually Unwrapping the Herculaneum Scrolls" in the Computer & Information Science & Engineering Directorate (CISE) Distinguished Lecture Series.
Brent Seales, heritage science chair in the Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering at the University of Kentucky, has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant as part of an international team seeking to unlock the secrets of the Herculaneum scrolls.
The University of Kentucky is well-represented on a list of the most-cited researchers in the world. In a database compiled by Stanford University in a partnership with Elsevier, 136 current UK scientists and scholars appear among the top 2% of the most-cited researchers across 22 disciplines. Of those 136 scientists and scholars, 20 are UK Pigman College of Engineering faculty.
