Two-Year Faculty Expansion Plan Brings 36 New Hires to School of Engineering & Science

The Charles V. Shaefer, Jr. School of Engineering and Science at Stevens Institute of Technology has recruited to 13 new faculty members for the 2019-20 academic year. The latest group of hires brings the total number of new hires to 36 over the last two years– a record expansion for the school of engineering and science.

Each of the new faculty members are budding or established researchers, underscoring the Shaefer School’s strategic plan goal to increase the school’s research profile.

The abundance of new faculty positions not only support an expanding student body and growing campus, but also join a prestigious group of core faculty members in the Schaefer School to strengthen research breadth and impact, and teaching expertise in the school’s six strategic research pillars: artificial intelligence and machine learning; biomedical engineering, healthcare and life sciences; cybersecurity; data science and information systems; quantum science and engineering; and resilience and sustainability.

“Stevens faculty is made up of scholars at the forefront of their fields who are committed to nurturing the next generation of leaders and experts,” said Jean Zu, dean of the Schaefer School. “The 36 new hires over the last two years will enhance our research efforts and impact in new and upcoming research areas, which gives our students the opportunity to work with and learn from leading experts.”

Provost and Vice President for academic affairs Christophe Pierre states, “Stevens’ world-class faculty is the heart of the university. These new faculty members were selected after extensive searches for top teaching and research talent. Their contributions will help drive Stevens forward, building our achievements and our reputation as a university dedicated to the development of knowledge and the application of technology toward contributing to human progress.”

The new faculty, representing a 20% expansion, hail from research institutions such as MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Michigan Tech, UC-Berkley and Columbia.

They are as follows:

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Jinho Kim, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Ph.D.: Columbia University, NY
Recent Affiliation: Columbia University, NY
Specialization: Image-Guided Drug Delivery, Minimally Invasive Systems

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

Antonia Zaferiou, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Ph.D.: University of Southern California
Recent Affiliation: Rush University Medical Center, Chicago
Specialization: Biomechanics, Motion Analysis, Wearable Sensors

Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Ansu Perekatt, Assistant Professor, Chemistry & Chemical Biology
Ph.D.: University of Illinois, Chicago
Recent Affiliation: Cancer Institute, Rutgers University
Specialization: Human Genetics, Oncogenesis

Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

Jae Chul Kim, Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Ph.D.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Recent Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley
Specialization: Large-scale Electro-Chemical Energy Storage, Spectroscopy

Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering

Yi Bao, Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering
Ph.D.: University of Missouri, Rolla
Recent Affiliation: University of Michigan
Specialization: Sustainable Smart Structures, Structural Health Monitoring

Mohammad Hajj, George Meade Bond Professor and Department Chair, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering; Director, Davidson Laboratory
Ph.D.: University of Texas, Austin
Recent Affiliation: Virginia Polytechnic and State University
Specialization: Fluid-Structure Interactions, Structural Dynamics, Energy Harvesting Systems

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

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

Reza Marsooli, Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering
Ph.D.: University of Mississippi
Recent Affiliation: Princeton University
Specialization: Fluid Dynamics in Riverine and Coastal Systems, Coastal Engineering

Weina Meng, Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering
Ph.D.: Missouri University of Science and Technology
Recent Affiliation: Missouri University of Science and Technology
Specialization: Structural Analysis, Modeling of Advanced Construction Materials

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

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

Department of Computer Science

Antonio Barbalace, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: University of Padova, Italy
Recent Affiliation: Huawei German Research Center, Munich, Germany
Specialization: Parallel and Heterogeneous Architecture, Hypervisors

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

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

Yue Ning, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: Virginia Polytechnic and State University
Recent Affiliation: Virginia Polytechnic and State University
Specialization: Machine Learning, Forecasting, Data Mining

Ji Shen, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: Rutgers University
Recent Affiliation: Rutgers University
Specialization: Machine Learning, High Dimensional Statistics, Optimization

Shusen Wang, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: Zhejiang University, China
Recent Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley
Specialization: Machine Learning, Data Science, Optimization

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

Jun Xu, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: Pennsylvania State University
Recent Affiliation: Pennsylvania State University
Specialization: Software and System Security, Software Engineering

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Sergul Aydore, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ph.D.: University of Southern California
Recent Affiliation: Amazon-SCOT, WA
Specialization: Machine Learning, Stochastic Modeling, Neuro-imaging

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

Kevin Lu, Teaching Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ph.D.: Washington University, St. Louis
Recent Affiliation: Broadcom, NJ
Specialization: Cyber-Physical Systems, Data Engineering

Elnaz Banan Sadeghian, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ph.D.: Georgia Institute of Technology
Recent Affiliation: Qualcomm, CA
Specialization: Signal Processing, Brain-Computer Interfaces, Machine Learning

Jie Shen, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Ph.D.: Rutgers University
Recent Affiliation: Rutgers University
Specialization: Machine Learning, Statistics, Optimization

Min Song, Professor and Department Chair, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ph.D.: University of Toledo, Ohio
Recent Affiliation: Michigan Technological University
Specialization: Computing and Cyber Systems, WiFi/Networks

Lei Wu, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ph.D.: Illinois Institute of Technology
Recent Affiliation: Clarkson University
Specialization: Large-Scale Power Systems, Smart Power Grids

Department of Mathematical Sciences

William Aeberhard, Assistant Professor, Mathematical Sciences
Ph.D.: University of Geneva, Switzerland
Recent Affiliation: Dalhousie University, Canada
Specialization: Statistical Modeling, Data Analytics

Department of Mechanical Engineering

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

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

Fan Yang, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Ph.D.: University of California, Berkeley
Recent Affiliation: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley
Specialization: Energy Storage, Multi-Scale Models

Xian Zhang, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Ph.D.: Columbia University, New York
Recent Affiliation: State University of New York, Buffalo
Specialization: Two-Dimensional Materials, Energy Transport and Conversion, Nanomanufacturing

Department of Physics

Igor Pikovski, Assistant Professor, Physics
Ph.D.: University of Vienna, Austria
Recent Affiliation: Harvard University
Specialization: Quantum Systems, Gravitational Phenomena

Ziaofeng 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