Cullen Faculty Swells by 22 with 2026–27 Academic Year Hires

Javed joins Cullen from the University of New Mexico, where she served as a Research Assistant Professor for two years. Her research focused on the molecular mechanisms of autophagy, particularly the roles of the autophagy-related proteins ATG8s and ATG9A in autophagosome closure, the final stage of autophagosome formation. Before this appointment, she completed four years of postdoctoral training at the Autophagy, Inflammation and Metabolism (AIM) Center at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. She also spent three years conducting research at Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center in China. Javed earned her Ph.D. in Biotechnology from Kurukshetra University in India.

Singh is a longtime pillar of the Biomedical Engineering Department at Cullen, starting as an undergraduate in 2011 shortly after the department was established in 2010. He earned his B.S. in 2014, and his doctorate in 2018. Following a two-year postdoc fellowship at the Gulf Coast Consortia Keck Center sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, he came back to Cullen as a postdoc, and worked for the past four years as a research assistant professor in Kirill Larin’s Biomedical Optics Laboratory. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, and his research interests include biomedical optics, optical instrumentation, multimodal imaging, signal and image processing, artificial intelligence and data science, biomechanics, and mechanobiology.

Prior to joining the Cullen College of Engineering, Das was an NIH T32 Research Fellow at the Center for Systems Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Das has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed publications and holds one patent. Her research focuses on developing next-generation immunoengineering platforms for cancer, autoimmune diseases and women’s health.

Gupta joins Cullen as a Presidential Frontier Faculty Fellow, supported by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) through a $1.5 million award for the recruitment of first-time, tenure-track faculty members. He is a research scientist known for developing advanced delivery systems for cancer immunotherapies while working at MIT. He earned his doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts.

Abdelmeguid comes to Cullen from the California Institute of Technology, where he has worked as a postdoctoral scholar for more than three years. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his undergraduate degree at the British University in Egypt. His research interests center on the mechanics of complex subsurface systems, with the goal of enabling safe energy extraction and storage and reducing the risks posed by geohazards. He combines high-fidelity computational modeling, laboratory experiments, and scientific machine learning to understand how coupled physical processes govern subsurface failure and fluid flow across scales.

Chehade is a mathematician specializing in the foundations of quantum information and computational theory, trying to bridge the large gap between theoretical quantum theory, computation and science. She comes to Cullen after three years as a postdoc at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a researcher position at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She earned her doctorate in mathematics from the University of Houston’s College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in 2021.

Liang is back with the Cullen College of Engineering after spending four years as CTO at LiBeyond LLC exploring beyond-lithium-ion battery technologies. His research interests include organic functional materials, and a wide variety of battery types – sodium, lithium, solid-state, multivalent metal and aqueous. Previously, he worked at Cullen for about four years as a research assistant professor and five years as a postdoctoral fellow. He earned his doctorate from Nankai University in China.

Zheng joins the Cullen College of Engineering following his postdoctoral training at Stanford University. His research focuses on developing innovative machine learning methods to integrate multi-omics and multi-modal biomedical data, with the overarching goal of improving cancer diagnosis and treatment. He earned his Ph.D. in Medical Sciences from Texas A&M University.

Ahmad joins Cullen after earning her doctorate in Bioengineering and serving as a Senior Teaching Fellow for the Center for Teaching Excellence at Rice University. Her research interests include tissue engineering and 3D printing, as well as nonexperimental studies involving STEM demographics and engineering education. At Rice, she was awarded the Outstanding Service Award from the Department of Bioengineering and the Robert Lowry.

Ledesma is a long-time professional of higher education with considerable experience in teaching, mentoring and advising undergraduate STEM students. He has more than 18 years of experience serving as faculty at the University of St. Thomas, Lone Star College, the University of Houston-Downtown and the University of Houston. He earned his doctorates in Physical Chemistry from the University of Sydney and Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston.

JK Bok joins the Cullen College of Engineering as an Instructional Associate Professor and Director of the Supply Chain and Logistics Technology (SCLT) Programs. Before joining the University of Houston, he spent more than 20 years in industry, serving in a variety of global supply chain executive leadership positions, including Chief Supply Chain Officer. Bok earned his Ph.D. from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and subsequently served as a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His academic research focused on supply chain optimization, dynamic optimization, and mixed-integer programming. He is the author of “No Partnership, No Success: Strategic Alliances in the Age of Capabilities (2025).” At the University of Houston, he looks forward to combining his industry experience with academic excellence to strengthen industry partnerships and help prepare the next generation of supply chain leaders.

Chung is a professional with more than 35 years of experience, leading and managing various projects involving engineering, procurement, construction and installation of complex offshore production facilities for the energy industry. For four years, he taught engineering courses and senior Capstone classes in the Ocean Engineering Department at Texas A&M University. Chung earned his Ph.D. in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Cortez’s role as executive director provides strategic leadership and overall management of TMAC, which delivers business, process improvement and technical assistance to manufacturing and related businesses across the region. Previously, she was the director of business operations for four years at the University of Texas at Arlington, as well as management roles as Texas A&M and Purdue. She earned her doctorate in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Illinois.

Rubin comes to Cullen from Amentum, a prime NASA contractor where he worked as the chief software engineer for numerous programs at Johnson Space Center. He also received the NASA Silver Snoopy Award in this role. His career has involved developing innovative and robust engineering solutions in the aerospace, defense and commercial industries. Prior to Amentum, he served as a principal engineer and technical project manager for Oceaneering, Boeing, United Space Alliance, Texas Tech and several other companies. He earned his Ph.D. in Systems and Engineering Management from Texas Tech, and his research interests include engineering management, reliability engineering, dynamic fault tree analysis, advanced optimization techniques and quantum computing.

Uğurel earned his M.S. and doctorate in Transportation Engineering from the University of Washington in Seattle. His research lies at the intersection of behavioral machine learning, human mobility and transportation systems. He has served as a visiting Ph.D. in the Machine Learning for Smart Mobility (MLSM) group at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Copenhagen. Most recently, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Resilient Urban Networks (RUN) Lab at New York University.

Gold worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Rice University for a year, prior to joining Cullen. She earned her doctorate in Media Arts and Sciences from Arizona State University. Gold also completed two assignments as a visiting student researcher for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Wen joins the Cullen College of Engineering after completing a postdoctoral appointment at the AI Innovation Institute at Stony Brook University. His research spans AI, computer architecture and computer systems, with a focus on building efficient and scalable intelligent systems.

Chase joins the faculty at Cullen after three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University. In her research, she designs multisensory interactive robotic systems that bridge human perception and machine control. She earned her doctorate in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford, and her B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering ands Applied Mechanics at Penn.

Before joining Cullen, Kim worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Physics Department at Penn for more than five years. He is an experimental scientist developing materials and device platforms for quantum information science, with research spanning materials synthesis, ultrafast optical spectroscopy and quantum device characterization. He earned his doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University.

Yang comes to Cullen after a year as a research scientist for the University of Wyoming’s School of Energy Resources. Previously, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher for the Los Alamos National Laboratory for three years, and a two-year postdoctoral fellowship for the University of Calgary. She earned her Ph.D. in Energy and Mineral Engineering from Penn State.