University of Iowa Technology Institute faculty affiliates Sharif Rahman, Jia Lu, and Shaoping Xiao, who are all faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, are on a research team led by Ching-Long Lin studying the educational gap between engineering scholars.

The United States Department of Education has awarded a $1 million grant to Professors Ching-Long Lin (PI), Sharif Rahman, Jia Lu, Shaoping Xiao, Rachel Vitali and Jane Russell to develop artificial intelligence modeling and simulation (AIMS) programs to bridge educational gaps between modeling and simulation and machine learning.