Welcome to the College of Engineering’s fourteen new faculty members, bringing expertise in the areas of construction engineering, human-computer interaction, AI and machine learning, biomechanics, metamaterials, cell and tissue engineering, polymerization, environmental engineering.
John Aromando
Instructor of computer and information sciences
M.Sc., Virginia Tech
Research interests: Human-computer interaction and education
Diana Arboleda
Assistant professor of civil, construction, and environmental engineering
Ph.D., structural engineering, University of Miami
Research interests: Fabric reinforced cementitious matrix (FRCM) Composites for infrastructure strengthening and rehabilitation; characterization methods
Abdulaziz “Aziz” Banawi
Associate professor of civil, construction, and environmental engineering
Edgar P. Small Professor of Construction Engineering and Management
Director, construction engineering and management
Ph.D., construction management and sustainability, University of Pittsburgh
Research interests: life cycle assessment, virtual design construction (VDC), building information modeling (BIM), and machine learning.
Ryan Comes
Associate professor of materials science and engineering
Ph.D, engineering physics, University of Virginia
Research interests: Synthesis of 4d and 5d complex oxides for electronic and quantum systems; oxide films and heterostructures for oxygen evolution and reduction catalysis; data analytics and machine learning for molecular beam epitaxy
Dong Dai
Associate professor of computer and information sciences
Ph.D., computer science, University of Science and Technology of China
Research interests: Optimizing and designing intelligent infrastructure for high-performance data-intensive systems, such as parallel file systems, metadata management, graph storage, and resource management
Yixiang Deng
Assistant professor of computer and information sciences
Ph.D., fluids and thermal sciences, Brown University
Research interests: Artificial intelligence and machine learning; bioinformatics and health informatics; connected health
Michael Hast
Associate professor of mechanical engineering
Ph.D., mechanical engineering, Pennsylvania State University
Research interests: Biomechanical engineering; biomedical engineering; biomechanics; materials engineering; solid mechanics
Mario Mencagli
Assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering
Ph.D., electromagnetics engineering, University of Siena, Italy
Research interests: Metamaterials and metasurfaces; transformation optics; reconfigurable devices; analog computing; space- and time-varying media
Zorana Mijic
Assistant professor of civil, construction, and environmental engineering
Ph.D., geosystems, University of California, Berkeley
Research interests: Structural engineering; mechanics; materials, engineering seismology
Victoria Muir
Assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering
Ph.D., bioengineering and biomedical engineering, University of Pennsylvania
Research interests: Cell movement; biomaterials under pressure; host-pathogen interactions
Luiza Notini
Assistant professor of civil, construction, and environmental engineering
Ph.D., civil and environmental engineering, University of Iowa
Research interests: Iron detox chemistry; redox reactions
Robert “Smitty” Oakes
Assistant professor of biomedical engineering
Ph.D., bioengineering, University of Utah
Research interests: Cell and tissue engineering; drug delivery and nanomedicine; immunoengineering; autoimmunity; cancer metastasis; biomaterials
Christian Pester
Associate professor of materials science and engineering
Ph.D., physical chemistry, RWTH Aachen University
Research interests: Polymerization; photolithography; preparation of multi-functional surfaces
Ioannis Rekletis
Associate professor of mechanical engineering
Ph.D., computer science, McGill University
Research interests: Mobile robotics, space robotics, multi-robot systems, sensor networks, artificial intelligence, computer vision and image processing, computational geometry, computer graphics