Engineering professor named KEEN Fellow

Dhuree Seth joined the University of Cincinnati in 2025. Photo/CEAS Marketing + Communications

The University of Cincinnati College of Engineering and Applied Science has been a partner with the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) since 2024. Seth has been part of KEEN since she was a PhD student more than 10 years ago.

Captivated by space shuttles and aircraft for as long as she can remember, the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster in 2003 was a pivotal moment in Seth's life. At the conclusion of a successful mission, the space shuttle disintegrated upon re-entry and shocked the world.

"I was in 8th grade when the Columbia disaster happened and it really impacted me," she said. "It was what pushed me into aerospace engineering. I wanted to understand why it did not work, and it started my career trajectory to where I am today."

She first came to the U.S. in 2012 for her master's degree at the University of Dayton. Her master's adviser was heavily involved in KEEN, which was her first introduction to the program.

At its core, KEEN centers on equipping engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset that teaches them to approach problems with curiosity, connections, and creating value. Known as the 3Cs, these principles are the foundation of the KEEN framework, which emphasizes that developing these skills helps engineering students question, adapt, and make positive change both in the classroom and outside of it.

Dhuree Seth teaches students across the entire undergraduate lifecycle at CEAS. Photo/CEAS Marketing + Communications

After completing her master's, PhD, and spending time as a postdoc, Seth joined UC's Department of Aerospace Engineering in 2025 as an assistant professor educator. In this position, her work primarily involves teaching, research, and service. Her research centers on unsteady aerodynamics and rotorcraft aerodynamics, using experimental and computational approaches, with additional interests in electric propulsion and acoustics for unmanned air vehicles.

Her teaching includes five courses across the entire undergraduate lifecycle at CEAS. Starting with introduction to aerospace design for first-year students and finishing with advanced aerodynamics labs for students in their final year.

"I want my classroom to be a place where students are actively thinking, not passively absorbing," Seth said.

In any of her classes, her students are getting inquiry-based, project-based learning built on critical thinking and collaboration. Reflection is another pillar of her classroom structure for not only her students, but her teaching assistants and herself as well.

Through her KEEN fellowship, Dhuree Seth is improving a semester-long project in her rocket propulsion course. Photo/CEAS Marketing + Communications

Students form teams and work together to design a solid-propellant sounding rocket for a specific mission. This project is anchored in the Columbia disaster, serving as a case study in what happens when engineers have the right data, but cannot make it decisive. Beyond the technical design work, this project builds skills students will need as practicing engineers. Things like cost analysis, stakeholder communication, engineering ethics and safety accountability, systems thinking, questioning their own assumptions, teamwork, leadership, and reflection.

Every faculty member at the conference was assigned a mentor who analyzed the progress of the chosen project over the following semester. Based on the project's initial success, Seth's mentor nominated her for one of the coveted fellowship spots.

Following the nomination, Seth was asked to write a proposal for the fellowship, showcasing how she would use the funding and further improve her project. With this fellowship, Seth plans to integrate an agentic AI model to enhance the student experience throughout the semester-long project.

"We are in the age of AI, and students are using it," she said. "I would rather be proactive about helping them learn to use it in a way that is genuinely beneficial to them, so it produces better engineers in the end."

Seth's goal with this AI model is not to replace student thinking, but to support it. The model would ask guiding questions rather than giving answers, helping students think through problems on their own, prompting them to consider what data would prove them wrong, building a habit of contrarian-thinking. It also lets them explore scenarios to understand how small changes can ripple through the rest of their design.