News Release
2022 New Faculty Hires at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
This is year one of a three-year 35+ faculty hiring cycle
October 17, 2022-- The University of California San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is proud to introduce 11 new professors hired in 2022. (View PDF) These faculty represent the first year in our latest three-year, 35+ faculty member hiring cycle. By 2024, the Jacobs School will have more than 300 professors, more than half of whom will have joined in just the last 10 years.
"The Jacobs School of Engineering is a young, vibrant and powerful school," said Albert P. Pisano, Dean of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. "One of my roles as Dean of the Jacobs School is to ensure that all our early career faculty know that they are empowered to leverage their research, teaching and mentoring efforts to achieve maximum positive impact."
The UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering has been ranked a top-10 school in the influential U.S. News and World Report Rankings of Best Engineering Schools for three consecutive years.
"I tell the new faculty, ‘YOU are a top-ten school. Your creative and dynamic approaches to research and education are not just valued but absolutely needed,’" said Pisano.
Jacobs School of Engineering 2022 New Faculty:
BIOENGINEERING
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Reem Khojah, Assistant Teaching Professor
Khojah develops mini-organs featuring novel micro-robotic systems that enable artificial intelligence to be part of the creative process in drug discovery pipelines. Her research aims to understand how the tumor micro-environment orchestrates drug-resistance pathways, which can lead to new insights in cancer prognosis and drug response.
Previously: Postdoctoral Researcher, UC Irvine
PhD: UCLA
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Vira Kravets, Assistant Professor
Kravets’ research focus is electrical, paracrine, and neural networks of insulin-producing beta-cells in healthy and diabetic conditions. Using advanced optical imaging and computational modeling, Kravets studies subpopulations of cells which disproportionately affect the rest of the population and are important in diabetes pathogenesis. Joint hire with the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego Health.
Previously: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical
PhD: University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
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Alyssa Taylor, Associate Teaching Professor
As a leader in bioengineering curriculum development, Taylor seeks to prepare students to engage in Universal Design, considering accessibility in their design work. Taylor aims to foster the development of inclusive, thoughtful engineering graduates who will integrate their technical and professional skills to positively impact society.
Previously: Associate Teaching Professor, University of Washington
PhD: University of Virginia
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
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Michael Coblenz, Assistant Professor
Coblenz studies how to design programming languages to improve developers’ productivity. He developed PLIERS (Programming Language Iterative Evaluation and Refinement System), which is a method of integrating user-centered design into the process of designing programming languages.
Previously: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Maryland
PhD: Carnegie Mellon University
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Earlence Fernandes, Assistant Professor
Fernandes' goal is to enable society to gain the benefits of emerging technologies without the security and privacy risks. He builds secure systems for emerging technologies. He is currently interested in Internet-scale end-user automation, cyber-physical systems, machine learning and mixed reality.
Previously: Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison
PhD: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Daniel Grier, Assistant Professor
The majority of Grier’s research is in quantum complexity theory. He is particularly interested in weak models of quantum computation such as Clifford circuits and low-depth circuits and proving that they exhibit some kind of quantum advantage over their classical counterparts.
Previously: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Waterloo
PhD: MIT
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Amy Ousterhout, Assistant Professor
Ousterhout is primarily interested in operating systems and networks in datacenters. Her recent research focuses on improving the efficiency of datacenter applications. She designs software systems that improve the resource efficiency and usability of applications in datacenters, without degrading application performance.
Previously: Postdoctoral Researcher, UC Berkeley
PhD: MIT
ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
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Jorge Poveda, Assistant Professor
Poveda analyzes and designs high-performance and adaptive feedback control algorithms for complex non-smooth and hybrid dynamical systems. Such tools could enable safe, optimal and autonomous operations of cyber-physical systems such as the power grid, transportation systems, automated agricultural systems, mobile robots and social networks.
Previously: Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Boulder
PhD: UC Santa Barbara
MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING
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Mamadou Diagne, Assistant Professor
Diagne focuses on the control of different types of differential equations in systems that arise in a number of complex multi-physics processes described by mass, energy and momentum balance laws. Applications range from the control of sedimentation in water channels and reservoirs to controlling the spread of epidemics.
Previously: Assistant Professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
PhD: University Claude Bernard Lyon, France
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Xuanting Hao, Assistant Professor
Hao seeks to understand the small-scale fluid motions at the atmosphere-ocean interface. He builds physics-based and data-driven models of sea-air processes, such as wind turbulence, surface gravity waves and sunlight propagation – and their interactions. Applications include weather forecasting, renewable energy harvesting and marine infrastructure protection.
Previously: Postdoctoral Associate, University of Minnesota
PhD: University of Minnesota
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
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Mehran Tehrani, Assistant Professor
Tehrani researches multifunctional composites, at the intersection of advanced manufacturing, materials science and mechanics. Projects include additively manufactured polymer composites, metal-nanocarbon hybrid conductors, sustainable multi-material additive manufacturing, robotics composite manufacturing and graphene-based structural composites.
Previously: Assistant Professor, UT Austin
PhD: Virginia Tech
Media Contacts
Katherine Connor
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-534-8374
khconnor@ucsd.edu