Professor Amanda Simson joined the Chemical Engineering faculty in September 2017. Her background is in using heterogeneous catalysis for alternative energy technologies and air pollution control. Currently, she is working on off-grid power production using locally sourced fuels. 

As a teacher, Professor Simson is dedicated to improving educational opportunities for students, particular in STEM. She enjoys developing game and creating engaging science curricula for kids as part of the Science Ninjas team. Professor Simson is also part of an NSF funded project developing biotech curricula for community college students, with collaborators at Bronx Community College. Prior to her Ph.D. work, Simson taught middle school mathematics for three years, two of which were with the Team for America Miami Corp. 

Professor Simson received her bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. from Columbia University Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. Her graduate work at Columbia focused on developing efficient hydrogen production process for PEM fuel cells and was sponsored by BASF. After her Ph.D. she spent two years developing hydrogen production technologies for Watt Fuel Cell in Port Washington, NY. 

Professor Simson currently teaches the Thermodynamics sequence and a graduate level elective in Environmental Catalysis.

Primarily grounded in animation and the moving image, Lucy Raven’s multidisciplinary practice also incorporates still photography, installation, sound, and performative lecture. Her work has been exhibited in solo presentations at such venues as the Serpentine Gallery, London (2016–17); Centre vox de l’image contemporaine, Montreal (2015); Portikus, Frankfurt (2014); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2012–13); and Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (2010), as well as in numerous group exhibitions around the world. Raven holds a BFA in studio art and a BA in art history from the University of Arizona, Tucson (2000), and an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2008). With Victoria Brooks and Evan Calder Williams, she is a founding member of the moving image research and production collective Thirteen Black Cats.

Dr. Martin S. Lawless earned his Ph.D. in acoustics from the Pennsylvania State University with a dissertation on using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess the brain's auditory and reward response to reverberation in musical passages. His research interests broadly involve the human perception of sound, including areas of virtual acoustics, musical acoustics, architectural acoustics, noise, and neuroimaging. He received his B.E. in mechanical engineering from The Cooper Union.

As a visiting assistant professor at Cooper from 2018-2021, Dr. Lawless worked with students on a range of undergraduate and graduate projects involving machine learning for head-related transfer functions, active noise control in office settings, and passive noise attenuation in exhaust systems. In 2021, Dr. Lawless embarked to Paris, France, to become a postdoctoral researcher at the L'Institut Jean Le Rond ∂’Alembert at l'Université de la Sorbonne, where his research focused on the localization of real and virtual sound sources, as well as improving sound localization training in virtual reality. Although he left Paris in 2022, he has continued as a visiting researcher during summers. 

From 2022-2025, Dr. Lawless joined The State University of New York Maritime College as an assistant professor in mechanical engineering, where his research has expanded to undergraduate engineering education, specifically examining project-based learning and problem-solving strategies. Dr. Lawless has taught a broad range of courses including first-year engineering design, dynamics, thermodynamics, vibrations, heat transfer, experimentation, musical instrument design, and other acoustic electives. He is an active member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), serving as the chair of ASA's Member Engagement committee and organizer of two different mentorship programs for the professional organization. 

Outside of the classroom (though sometimes in it as well), Dr. Lawless can be found playing a variety of musical instruments, swing dancing, or baking bread.

Doug Ashford A'81 is an artist and has taught at Cooper Union since 1989. He is also a visiting Associate Professor for the MFA Program in Painting at The Yale School of Art. Ashford’s principal art practice from 1983 until 1996 was Group Material, a collaborative project that used exhibition design and social practice in museums and other public spaces to imagine new political forms. Prominent in this history are the exhibitions: The Castle (dOCUMENTA 8, Kassel, Germany, 1987), Democracy (The Dia Art Foundation, New York, 1988) and AIDS Timeline (The Berkeley Art Museum 1989, Wadsworth Atheneum, 1990, The Whitney Museum, 1991). Group Material’s work in exhibition production, public cultural display, and the mobilization of politics continue to affect many disciplines in and around the production of contemporary art. The sixteen-year history of the group is documented in the book Show and Tell: A Chronicle of Group Material, (Julie Ault, ed. Four Corners Books, 2010). After 1996, Ashford went on to make paintings, produce exhibitions and publish articles independently and in other collaborations. Who Cares (Creative Time, 2006), is a book project built from a series of conversations between Ashford and an assembly of other cultural practitioners on public expression, beauty, and ethics. His painting installations have been shown recently at dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel (2012), The Henie Onstad Center, Norway (2013) and the 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016). Ashford’s book, Writings and Conversations, (Mousse Publishing, 2013), was published on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Grazer Kunstverein, (AU). His work is represented by Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam.