Campus & Community

Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering & Science Welcomes 21 New Faculty and Lecturers for the 2024-2025 Academic Year

The Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering and Science at Stevens Institute of Technology welcomes 16 new tenure stream and non-tenure stream faculty members and five lecturers for the 2024-25 academic year. The new hires span eight departments and the globe, with research areas including pertinent topics such as artificial intelligence, renewable energy, healthcare innovation and more. With these new additions, the Schaefer School has now added 111 tenure stream and non-tenure stream faculty over the past seven years.

Another strong hiring year showcases the school’s ability to both attract top academic talent and nurture early career  faculty who excel in their fields. These 21 new faculty members join a school that is riding the momentum of consecutive records for research funding, including $38.2 million in the 2023-24 academic year.

“I am excited to welcome the newest faculty members to the Schaefer School of Engineering and Science and another year of top-notch faculty joining us in our effort to build a world-class school on education and research," said Jean Zu, Lore E. Feiler Dean of the Schaefer School of Engineering and Science

The new additions to the Schaefer School community are:

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Rachel Jones, Lecturer, Biomedical Engineering
Ph.D.: University of Texas, Dallas
Recent Affiliation: New Jersey Institute of Technology
Specialization: Musculoskeletal modeling and ergonomics

William Querido, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Ph.D.: Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and University of Haute Alsace (France)
Recent Affiliation: Temple University
Specialization: Tissue biomineralization, infrared spectroscopy and imaging, extracellular matrix composition and structure

Ilke Uguz, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Ph.D.: Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne (France)
Recent Affiliation: Columbia University
Specialization: Tissue engineering and biomaterials, hybrid neural implants, microfluids

Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Stephanie Polifroni, Senior Lecturer, Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Ph.D.: City University of New York
Recent Affiliation: New York City Police Department Police Laboratory

Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering

Mahmoud Ayyad, Research Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering
Ph.D.: Stevens Institute of Technology
Recent Affiliation: Stevens Institute of Technology
Specializations: Machine learning, deep learning, computer vision hydrodynamics, sensitivity analysis, programming

Santhi Sri Billapati, Senior Lecturer, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering
Ph.D.: Ph.D.: Stevens Institute of Technology
Recent Affiliation: Stevens Institute of Technology

Matthew Janssen, Research Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering
Ph.D.: Stevens Institute of Technology
Recent Affiliation: Stevens Institute of Technology
Specializations: Coastal modeling and forecasting, machine learning/data-driven methods

Jia Mi, Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering
Ph.D.: University of Michigan
Recent Affiliation: University of Michigan
Specializations: Offshore renewable energy, fluid-structure interaction, multi-fidelity modeling

Ronghuan Xu, Teaching Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering
Ph.D.: New Mexico State University
Recent Affiliation: Stevens institute of Technology

Department of Computer Science

William Hendrix, Teaching Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: North Carolina State University
Recent Affiliation: University of South Florida

Shaoyi Huang, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: University of Connecticut
Recent Affiliation: University of Connecticut
Specializations: AI systems, sparsity and parallelism exploitation sparse training, efficient machine learning

Jina Huh-Yoo, Associate Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: University of Michigan
Recent Affiliation: Drexel University
Specializations: Human-computer interaction, health informatics, social computing

Wenting (Tiffany) Li, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: University of Illinois
Recent Affiliation: University of Illinois
Specializations: Human-computer interaction, AI, computing and education

Hongyuan Liu, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: College of William & Mary
Recent Affiliation: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)
Specializations: High-performance computing, systems

Dmitry Paramonov, Teaching Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: Princeton University
Recent Affiliation: Princeton University
Specializations: Theory (streaming complexity, interactive coding), distributed systems, computer science education

Zining Zhu, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: University of Toronto
Recent Affiliation: University of Toronto
Specialization: Natural languages processing, explainable AI

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Hao Wang, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ph.D.: University of Toronto (Canada)
Recent Affiliation: Louisiana State University
Specializations: Distributed machine learning systems, serverless computing, ML/AI security, large-scale data analytics

Department of Mathematical Sciences

Roy Cardenas, Lecturer, Mathematical Sciences
Ph.D.: University at Albany, State University of New York
Recent Affiliation: Hunter College of City University of New York

Department of Physics

Yashashree Jadhav, Lecturer, Physics
Ph.D.: Rochester Institute of Technology
Recent Affiliation: Elon University
Specializations: Active galactic nuclei, gravitational waves, variable stars

Santosh Kumar, Research Assistant Professor, Physics
Ph.D.: Jawaharlal Nehru University (India)
Recent Affiliation: Stevens Institute of Technology
Specializations: Atomic, molecular and optical physics; microwave and radio frequency electric field sensing technologies; quantum optics; quantum information

Department of Systems and Enterprises

Yasser Morgan, Teaching Professor, Systems and Enterprises
Ph.D.: Carleton University (Canada)
Recent Affiliation: University of Regina (Canada)
Specialization: Artificial neural networks, machine learning, big-data analytics, automation and autonomy