The Cullen College of Engineering is proud to announce the hiring and promotion of 31 faculty members for the 2023-2024 academic year.
All employees were hired after a competitive search process and multiple rounds of interviews. The displayed order is alphabetically by department, and then last name.
Biomedical Engineering
Yuncheng Du, associate professor, starting Sept. 2023. Du earned his doctorate from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, in 2016. The same year, he was hired as an assistant professor at Clarkson University in New York. He earned a NSF CAREER Award in 2022.
Lu Wang, assistant professor, starting Sept. 2023. Wang earned her doctorate degrees in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto in 2023 and Computer Science from Wayne State University in 2019, respectively. Since 2022, she has served as an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Texas State University.
William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
Omar A. Abdelrahman, associate professor, starting Jan. 2024. Abdelrahman earned his doctorate from Syracuse University in 2016. He has been an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts since 2018. He earned a NSF CAREER award in 2021.
Civil & Environmental Engineering
Mahdi Safa, instructional assistant professor, starting Jan. 2023. Safa was promoted from his role as senior lecturer, which he has held since 2021. He earned his doctorate in 2013 from the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
Krishna Rishi Vijay Saladi, lecturer, starting June 2023. Saladi earned his doctorate in Environmental Engineering from UH in 2018, followed by a M.S. in Statistics and Data Science in 2022. For the past two years, he has been a graduate instructional assistant at UH. He has also worked as an engineer for KIT Professionals and AECOM Technical Services.
Yuntian Wu, senior lecturer, starting Sept. 2023. Wu earned his doctorate in Civil Engineering from the University of Southern California in 2008. Since Sept. 2017, he has been a professor at Chongqing University in China. He also served as a visiting scholar at the State University of New York at Buffalo for the Spring 2023 semester.
Siavash Zamiran, senior lecturer, starting July 2023. Zamiran earned his doctorate in Civil Engineering-Geotechnical from Southern Illinois in 2017. For the past four years, he has worked as an adjunct professor at Missouri University.
Construction Management
Dwight Beadle, professor of practice, starting Sept. 2023. Beadle has been an adjunct professor at the University of Houston for 6 years and earned his M.S. in Construction Management from UH in 2018.
Eva Lyon, professor of practice, starting Sept. 2023. Lyon has been a lecturer and adjunct professor at the University of Houston for 13 years and earned her M.S. in Construction Management from UH in 2012. Lyon has more than 28 years of experience managing civil, architecture and sustainable practice projects, in a wide variety of commercial and residential business fields.
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Pieremanuele Canepa, assistant professor, starting Sept. 2023. Canepa earned his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. Since 2018, he has been an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore. In 2022, he was named a Rising Star by the American Chemical Society.
Chu Meh Chu, senior lecturer, starting Sept. 2023. Chu earned his doctorate from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2015. Chu is a machine learning expert with research, teaching and work experience in data visualization using data compression tools.
Sebastian Csutak, lecturer, starting June 2023. Csutak earned his doctorate in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. For the past two years, he has worked as an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics at Texas Southern University. He has a strong IP record, with 45 U.S. patents, and has worked for Baker Hughes, Aramco, Motorola and IBM.
Jianfeng Zheng, assistant professor, starting Sept. 2023. Zheng has been working at UH since 2012, first as a postdoctoral fellow and then as a research assistant professor. Along with Ji Chen, he has landed four grants for their work on electrical devices. Zheng earned his doctorate in 2009 from Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Engineering Technology
Samia Afrin, instructional assistant professor, starting Sept. 2023. Afrin earned her doctorate in Environmental Science and Engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso in 2015. Since 2016, she has been an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering, Engineering Technology and Surveying at East Tennessee State University.
Adnan Al-Ibadi, professor of practice, starting July 2023. Al-Ibadi earned his doctorate in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Oklahoma in 2014. For the past four years, he has been employed as a lecturer and labs coordinator in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Central Oklahoma.
Eman Ibrahim, professor of practice, starting April 2023. Ibrahim earned her doctorate in Microbiology from Al-Azhar University in Egypt, in association with Texas A&M, in 2017. She previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and as a research associate at the Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment at Texas A&M.
Gowtham Mohan, assistant professor, starting Sept. 2023. Mohan earned his doctorate from the Australian National University in 2018. Since 2019, he has been an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico. He has earned $1.5 million in funding from the Department of Energy in that time frame.
Human Development and Consumer Sciences
Ebony Robinson, assistant professor, starting Sept. 2023. Robinson earned her doctorate in Consumer and Design Sciences from Auburn University this year, where she also served as a teaching assistant and lecturer for three years. For five years, she was the lead instructor in Marketing Management Technology & Fashion Merchandising at Hinds Community College.
Industrial Engineering
Matthew Hu, lecturer, starting Sept. 2023. Hu earned his doctorate in Industrial Engineering from Wayne State University in Michigan. He has more than 20 year’s experience as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston, Wayne State University, Walsh College and Tianjin University in China. He was also employed as an instructor and trainer for the Ford Motor Company Design Institute.
Neil Diaz Martinez, lecturer, starting Sept. 2023. Martinez earned his doctorate in Industrial Engineering this year from Texas A&M, where he has also served as an instructor for the past two years. He was employed in various roles in the IT field in Colombia for 11 years before pursuing his doctorate.
Nathanial Wiggins, instructional assistant professor, starting Feb. 2023. Wiggins was promoted from his role as senior lecturer, which he was hired for in Aug. 2021. Prior to that role, he was a distinguished professor of Engineering and Mathematics at San Jacinto College for 12 years. He earned his doctorate in Systems and Engineering Management from Texas Tech in 2020.
Na Zou, assistant professor, starting Jan. 2024. Zou earned her doctorate from Arizona State University in 2015. She has earned a NSF CAREER award, and more than $840,000 in external funding.
Information Science Technology
Maria Burns, assistant professor, starting Sept. 2023. Burns has been with the university since 2014, serving as a program coordinator, faculty member and researcher at the Technology Leadership and Innovation Management program. Burns earned her doctorate from the University of Houston in 2022. Since 2016, she has earned more than $1.6 million in research grants.
Yueqin Huang, assistant professor, starting Sept. 2023. Huang has been with the university since 2019, as a research assistant professor. She has also served as the founder and chief scientist for Cyentech Consulting, LLC., since 2017. Huang earned her doctorate in 2011 from Xiamen University in Fujian, China. She has earned more than $4 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy since 2017.
Seo Yoon Lee, assistant professor, starting Sept. 2023. Lee earned her doctorate from the University of Illinois this year. In 2021, her papers earned national graduate student awards from the National Communication Association and the Korean American Communication Association.
Jovita Nsoh, assistant professor, starting Sept. 2023. Nsoh earned his doctorate from Colorado Technical University in 2021. For the past year, he has served as a professor of practice at the University of Houston. Previously, he worked for more than 20 years in various cybersecurity and computing roles for Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, ConocoPhillips and other firms.
Mechanical Engineering
Kelly Huang, assistant professor, starting Jan. 2024. Huang earned her doctorate from Princeton University in 2021. For the past two years, she has been employed as a postdoctoral researcher at Notre Dame.
MyoungKyu Lee, assistant professor, starting Sept. 2023. Lee earned his doctorate from the University of Texas in 2015. He was previously an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, and a postdoctoral researcher at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Texas.
Rasiah Raja Loganantharaj, lecturer, starting Sept. 2023. Loganantharaj earned his doctorate from Colorado State University. For the past three years, he has served as chief technology officer for RasBro Technology, LLC. He previously worked as a professor of Computer Science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette from Jan. 2013 through Aug. 2018.
Lucy Nwosu, lecturer, starting Sept. 2023. Nwosu earned her doctorate in 2023 from Prairie View A&M University. Since 2019, she has been a data engineer for both the Department of Homeland Security and the Center for Computational Systems Biology at Prairie View A&M. She also worked as an adjunct professor at Texas Southern University for two years.
Jian Rong, research assistant professor, starting July 2023. Rong earned his doctorate in University of Science and Technology of China in 2016. From 2017 to 2021, he participated in superconductivity projects of ITER (magnetic confinement fusion) and SHINE (high energy linear accelerator) as a postdoctroal fellow and assistant professor in Chinese Academy of Sciences. For the past two years, he has been employed as a senior engineer by Lanzhou University.