Stevens Continues to Expand Faculty With Two Dozen Additions for 2019-2020

(Hoboken, N.J. -- Aug. 30, 2019) -- Stevens Institute of Technology has welcomed 24 new faculty members for the 2019-2020 academic year – including a new vice provost – continuing the university’s strategic effort to broaden the impact of its research and teaching.

The influx marks the second year in a row that Stevens has added a large number of new faculty members; for 2018-2019, Stevens brought in a record 30 faculty members.

Stevens’ new faculty members hail from prestigious institutions in the United States and abroad and were selected because of their ability to make important contributions to research and education in the university’s strategic priority areas: artificial intelligence, data science, financial systems, complex systems, biomedical engineering and sustainability.

They augment world-class talent in all four of the university’s schools and join Stevens at a time when the university is expanding its campus and increasing both the size and competitiveness of its incoming classes. 

“Our new faculty members represent the top research and teaching talent in fields that are advancing society,” said Christophe Pierre, Stevens’ provost and vice president for academic affairs. “Their groundbreaking research will help Stevens carry out its mission of developing knowledge and applying technology toward solving some of the most important problems we face.”

Stevens’ new faculty members join the university from research institutions such as Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University, Case Western Reserve University, UCLA, New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, among others.

They are as follows:

School of Engineering and Science

Zhuo Feng, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ph.D.: Texas A&M University
Recent Affiliation: Michigan Technological University
Specialization: Integrated Circuit Design and CAD, High-Performance Spectral Graph Algorithms, Hardware Acceleration of Compute-Intensive Graph and Numerical Algorithms

Tian Han, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: University of California, Los Angeles
Recent Affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles
Specialization: Statistical Machine Learning focused on Computer Vision Applications

Mohammad Ilbeigi, Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering
Ph.D.: Georgia Institute of Technology
Recent Affiliation: Bowling Green State University
Specialization: Advanced Statistical and Computational Analysis focused on Uncertainties in Infrastructure Systems

Hamidreza Jafarnejadsani, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Ph.D.: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Recent Affiliation: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Specialization: Secure and Resilient Control of Cyber-Physical Systems

Kaijian Liu, Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering
Ph.D.: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Recent Affiliation: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Specialization: Informatics and Analytics for the Development and Management of Smart, Sustainable, and Resilient Built Environment

Xueqing (Susan) Liu, Assistant Professor, Computer Sciences (Spring 2020 start)
Ph.D.: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Recent Affiliation: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Specialization: Software Engineering, Security and Privacy, Data Mining

Xiao-Feng Qian, Assistant Professor, Physics
Ph.D.: University of Rochester
Recent Affiliation: University of Rochester
Specialization: Quantum Information, Quantum and Coherence Optics, Foundational Physics, Open System Dynamics, Condensed Matter

Chunlei Qu, Assistant Professor, Physics
Ph.D.: University of Texas at Dallas
Recent Affiliation: University of Colorado, Boulder
Specialization: Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, Condensed Matter Physics 

Rita Sousa, Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering
Ph.D.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Recent Affiliation: Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi
Specialization: Geotechnical Engineering and Geomechanics of the Subsurface 

Long Wang, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Ph.D.: Vanderbilt University
Recent Affiliation: Columbia University Specialization: Modeling, Sensing, and Control of Robots 

Shang Wang, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Ph.D.: University of Houston
Recent Affiliation: Baylor College of Medicine, TX Specialization: Optics, Engineering, Biomedicine 

Jia Xu, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: RWTH-Aachen University, Germany
Recent Affiliation: Graduate Center & Hunter College, City University of New York
Specialization: Machine Learning and Statistical Natural Language Processing 

Xiangwu (David) Zeng, Professor and Vice Provost for Academic Innovation and Faculty Affairs
Ph.D.: Cambridge University
Recent Affiliation: Case Western Reserve University
Specialization: Centrifuge Modeling of Geotechnical Problems, Soil Mechanics for Lunar and Mars Exploration, Vibration and Noise Attenuation of Railway Foundations for High-Speed Trains, Mechanical Properties of Granular Materials Under Microgravity

School of Business

Jing Chen, Assistant Professor
Ph.D.: New York University
Recent Affiliation: State University of New York at Buffalo
Specialization: Accounting

Zachary Feinstein, Assistant Professor
Ph.D.: Princeton University
Recent Affiliation: Washington University in St. Louis
Specialization: Finance 

Dan Pirjol, Assistant Professor
Ph.D.: Johannes Guttenberg University, Mainz
Recent Affiliation: JPMorgan Chase
Specialization: Finance 

Andrea Rozario, Assistant Professor
Ph.D.: Rutgers University
Recent Affiliation: PwC
Specialization: Accounting 

Wei Zheng, Associate Professor and Richard R. Roscitt Endowed Chair in Leadership
Ph.D.: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Recent Afffiliation: University of Wisconsin, River Falls
Specialization: Management 

School of Systems and Enterprises

Sang Won (Grace) Bae, Assistant Professor
Ph.D.: Carnegie Mellon University
Recent Affiliation: Carnegie Mellon University
Specialization: Using smart technology to develop, deploy and evaluate new approaches to the human obstacles surrounding widespread everyday adoption of ubiquitous sensing and intelligent computing technologies 

Mehmet Gunes, Associate Professor
Ph.D.: University of Texas, Dallas
Recent Affiliation: University of Nevada, Reno
Specialization: Cybersecurity, Internet measurements and network science using big data, data mining, high performance computing, machine learning and statistics 

Philip Odonkor, Assistant Professor
Ph.D.: State University of New York at Buffalo
Recent Affiliation: State University of New York at Buffalo
Specialization: Developing and using data-driven methodologies to enable efficient and sustainable energy use within built environments, with the goal of enabling smart cities 

College of Arts and Letters 

Amber Benezra, Assistant Professor
Ph.D.: New School for Social Research
Previous Affiliation: New York University
Specialization: Sociocultural anthropology 

Mario Diaz de Leon, Assistant Professor
Ph.D.: Columbia University
Recent Affiliation: Columbia University
Specialization: Music

 Stevens media contact: Katie Koch, 201-216-5139, [email protected]