December 5, 2018

Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering welcomes 17 new faculty

December 5, 2018

This year, UC Riverside’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering (BCOE) welcomed 17 new faculty members, bringing its total faculty cohort to 129. Among the additions are the new engineering dean, a distinguished engineering professor, three provost diversity fellows, a Fulbright Scholar, a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER awardee, and two assistant research engineers. These esteemed new faculty members will aid in BCOE’s mission to build on over a quarter century of innovation and research and strengthens our commitment to educating a diverse population of students.

BCOE is a leader in engineering research and education. In just the past two years, the college moved 10 ranks to No. 61 nationally and No. 33 among public engineering colleges by U.S. News and World Report. In addition, UC Riverside has more active NSF CAREER awards, totaling $16.5 million, than any other public university in California. Following is a list of new engineering faculty along with a research highlight:

 

Bioengineering

Giulia Palermo, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Italian Institute of Technology and University of Genova

Swiss NSF Fellow

Jia Guo, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., University of California, San Diego

Postdoctoral researcher, Lucas Imaging Center at Stanford University

Elena Kokkoni, Assistant Research Engineer

Ph.D., University of Delaware

UD NSF I-Corps Mini Grant

 

Chemical and Environmental Engineering

Michael R. Zachariah, Distinguished Professor

Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles

University of Maryland School of Engineering Faculty Outstanding Researcher Award

Don Collins, Professor

Ph.D., California Institute of Technology

Distinguished Achievement College-Level Award in Teaching

Cesunica Ivey, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology

UCR Provost Diversity Engineering Faculty Fellow

Kandis Leslie Gilliard Abdul-Aziz, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

UCR Provost Diversity Engineering Faculty Fellow

 

Computer Science and Engineering

Manu Sridharan, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

Outstanding Artifact Award

Paea LePendu, Professor of Teaching

Ph.D., Stanford University

Distinguished Paper (Disease Enrichment), American Medical Informatics Association

Mariam Salloum, Professor of Teaching

Ph.D., University of California, Riverside

Co-Chair, WTS 2016 Big Data in Telecommunications Workshop

 

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Ran Cheng, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin

Post doctorate, Carnegie Mellon University

Samet Oymak, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., California Institute of Technology

Simons-Berkeley Research Fellowship 

Hossein Taheri, Assistant Research Engineer

Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology

Scholarship and Research Grant, Center for Academic Partnership, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) NASA

 

Mechanical Engineer

Christopher Lynch, Dean

Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara

Fellow, ASME and SPIE

Mona Eskandari, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Stanford University

UCR Provost Diversity Engineering Research Faculty Fellow

Luat Vuong, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Cornell University

Fulbright Scholar

Bhargav Rallabandi, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Best Paper Award, Carbon Mitigation Initiative of Princeton University