Megan L. Matthews
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Education
- Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, North Carolina State University, 2019, Advisor: Cranos Williams
- M.S. Electrical Engineering, North Carolina State University, 2012, Advisor: Cranos Williams
- B.S. Electrical Engineering, North Carolina State University, 2011
Biography
Megan Matthews is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She earned her bachelor's, master's, and doctorate in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University. Megan’s work involves developing multiscale computational models to explore the impacts of a changing environment on plants and to identify engineering strategies for improving plant development and growth. She uses mechanistic and data-driven approaches to develop models describing plant processes at regulatory, metabolic, and physiological scales. Her body of work includes using crop growth and mechanistic metabolic models to explore how the effectiveness and resilience of photosynthetic improvement strategies on crop production is influenced when accounting for field-level crop growth dynamics. Her group also models crop-microbe symbiotic relationships and metabolism to identify and assess strategies to sustainably increase nutrient use efficiency for crops.
Academic Positions
- Postdoctoral Research Associate, Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 7/2019-12/2020
- Assistant Professor, Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 1/2021 - Present
Research Interests
- Multiscale plant and crop modeling (gene regulation, protein regulation, metabolism, physiology, ecosystem, etc.)
- Photosynthesis modeling and engineering
- Crop and environmental sustainability
- Control systems theory in biological modeling
- Data-driven modeling
Recent Courses Taught
- CEE 340 - Energy and Global Environment
- CEE 498 MP (CEE 498 MPC, CEE 498 MPG, CEE 498 MPO) - Modeling Plants Gene-Ecosystem
- CEE 535 - Environmental Systems II
- CEE 556 - Hydrocomplexity
- CEE 595 W - Hydro Seminar