Supporting Faculty Research

Over the past year, the College of Engineering has launched two new programs aimed at both junior and mid-career faculty members looking to further their research.

The Associate Professor Research Fellowship Program was established to provide research support to associate professors who aspire to expand their portfolio, offering professional development, funding, mentorship and coaching. This program, which launched last summer with two awardees, aims to help faculty become more active within the research community while broadening their professional network and developing more competitive proposals.

Presented to four awardees for the 2022-23 academic year, the Assistant Tenure-Track Faculty Career Development Award is intended to help tenure-track faculty members facilitate relationships with mentors and collaborators at other institutions who can aid in accelerating research development.

Meet the first recipients of these two awards.

Associate Professor Research Fellowship Program:

Xiaofang (Maggie) Wang, PhD, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

The recent introduction of heterogeneous system-on-chip (SoC) field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) in cloud-based, high-performance computing systems raises a plethora of security and privacy concerns. Dr. Wang’s research is dedicated to resource- and energy-efficient architectures that integrate hardware and software techniques for securing the on-chip memory systems of cloud-based SoC FPGAs.

Rosalind Wynne, PhD, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Treatments for chronic conditions like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease require years of development, slowly progressing from static cell cultures to clinical trials on animals, and many promising candidates fail. Dr. Wynne’s research seeks to redefine this flawed and time-consuming process by developing optical-fiber tools for microfluidic cell cultures. By allowing a continuous flow of cells with pharmaceuticals in microscopic-sized volumes, these tiny laboratories will expedite drug development toward impactful personalized

Assistant Tenure-Track Faculty Career Development Awards:

Weijian Diao, PhD, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Dr. Diao’s research focuses on heterogeneous catalysis, especially rational catalyst synthesis and its applications for renewable chemical production. In his work, he synthesizes nanostructured metal-metal and metal-metal oxide catalysts with unique composition and morphology for hydrocarbon conversion, CO2 utilization and renewable energy.

Jonathan Hubler, PhD Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Dr. Hubler studies the geotechnical aspects of natural hazards. Specifically, his research group has been evaluating soil behavior during earthquake events and the impacts of extreme events on infrastructure performance.

Xun Jiao, PhD, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dr. Jiao aims to develop robust and efficient computing systems for intelligent algorithms such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. This has a broad range of application fields, including smart health care, green environment and autonomous systems.

Mojtaba Vaezi, PhD, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dr. Vaezi’s interests include the broad areas of wireless communications and information theory. In his work, Dr. Vaezi is applying emerging tools from deep learning to increase connectivity, speed and autonomy of fifth-generation (5G) and beyond wireless networks. Specifically, he is working on multiple access nodes for massive connectivity and interference management for cellular networks and drones.