new faculty 2019
BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
Debajiy Saha
Assistant Professor (August 2019)
Debajit Saha is interested in developing neural engineering and brain-computer interface techniques to address how population neuron responses shape associative learning, social behavior, and decision-making in real time. He is working
to develop bio-robots that hijack the biological chemical sensing and information processing capabilities toward medical, public safety, and environmental applications.
EDUCATION: PhD, physics,
Washington University in St. Louis; MS, physics, Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay, India; BS, physics, Jadavpur University, India
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Research scientist, biomedical engineering,
Washington University in St. Louis
BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING; COMPUTATIONAL MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING/AND RADIOLOGY
Adam Alessio
Professor (November 2018)
Adam Alessio focuses on non-invasive quantification of disease through advanced imaging algorithms and integrated data analysis. His research group solves clinically motivated research problems at the intersection of imaging and medical
decisionmaking.
EDUCATION: PhD, MS, BS, electrical engineering, University of Notre Dame; and post-doctoral training in nuclear medicine physics, University of Washington.
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Professor of radiology, University of Washington
BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING; COMPUTATIONAL MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Saiprasad Ravishankar
Assistant Professor (February 2019)
Saiprasad Ravishankar focuses his research on signal and image processing, computational and biomedical imaging, datadriven systems, machine learning, inverse problems, compressed sensing, dictionary learning, data science, image analysis,
and large-scale data processing and optimization.
EDUCATION: PhD and MS, electrical and computer engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; BTech, electrical engineering, Indian Institute of
Technology Madras, India
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Research fellow, University of Michigan, and a postdoctoral research associate at Los Alamos National Laboratory
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS SCIENCE
David Hickey
Assistant Professor (August 2019)
David Hickey is focused on the storage and conversion of electrochemical energy. His research combines analytical techniques with computational modeling to design molecules and materials for applications ranging from grid-scale energy
storage to high-precision biosensing.
EDUCATION: PhD, organic chemistry, BS, chemistry, University of Oklahoma
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Research assistant professor,
University of Utah
Caroline Szczepanski
Assistant Professor (August 2019)
Caroline Szczepanski integrates fundamental polymer chemistry and reaction engineering to identify innovative and efficient approaches to develop functional soft materials. The materials developed from her research are used for applications
in biomaterials, coatings, and adhesives.
EDUCATION: PhD and MS, chemical and biological engineering, University of Colorado; BS, chemical engineering, Lafayette College, Pennsylvania
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Research
assistant professor, Northwestern University
Daniel Woldring
Assistant Professor (August 2019)
Daniel Woldring focuses his work on high-performance proteins used for diagnosing and therapeutically treating diseases. His research combines directed evolution and high-throughput experiments with structural biology and bioinformatics
to elucidate biological processes and their clinical relevance.
EDUCATION: PhD, chemical engineering, University of Minnesota; BS, chemical engineering, Michigan Technological University
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Postdoctoral fellow, Brandeis University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
Bora Cetin
Assistant Professor (August 2019)
Bora Cetin’s research encompasses multiple research fields including transportation infrastructure, nuclear waste disposal, municipal solid waste landfill design, remediation of mine waste/contaminated soils, and sustainable geotechnical
practices.
EDUCATION: PhD and MS, civil engineering, University of Maryland; BS, civil engineering, Instanbul Technical University in Turkey.
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Assistant professor and head of the Sustainable Geotechnical Infrastructure Group, Iowa State University
Kristen Cetin
Assistant Professor (August 2019)
Kristen Cetin works on building energy modeling and data analytics to assess building energy use and performance, including determining methods to improve energy efficiency, reduce energy use, and reduce peak electric grid load contributions,
as well as enhance building sustainability. Her research also includes the development, laboratory testing and use of smart technologies enhancing building performance and assessment.
EDUCATION: PhD, civil
engineering, University of Texas at Austin; MS and BS, civil and environmental engineering, University of Maryland
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Assistant professor, Iowa State University
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Kristen Johnson
Assistant Professor (August 2019)
Kristen Johnson’s research interests include the application of natural language processing and machine learning techniques for social computing and computational social science. Her research models high-level abstractions of Twitter
language and behavior to predict real world political and social patterns.
EDUCATION: PhD, computer science, Purdue University; MS, computer science, and BS, psychology, University of New
Orleans
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Research assistant, Purdue University
Parisa Kordjamshidi
Assistant Professor (August 2019)
Parisa Kordjamshidi has research interests in machine learning, natural language processing, combining learning and reasoning paradigms and learning-based programming. She is a 2019 recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER
Award.
EDUCATION: PhD, computer science, KU Leuven, Belgium; MS, computer engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Iran; BS, computer engineering, Isfahan University, Iran
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Assistant
professor, Tulane University
Josh Siegel
Assistant Professor (January 2019)
An inventor and entrepreneur, his research interests include the Internet of Things, pervasive sensing, connected and autonomous vehicles, security and privacy, and artificial intelligence.
EDUCATION: PhD,
MS, and BS, mechanical engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Research scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Qiben Yan
Assistant Professor (August 2019)
Qiben Yan investigates the security of intelligent things. His primary research interests are in Internet of Things security, mobile security and privacy, wireless networking security, and botnet and malware detection.
EDUCATION: PhD,
computer science, Virginia Tech; MS and BS, electrical engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Assistant professor, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, where he led
the Cybersecurity and Threat Intelligence Lab.
ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
Bahare Kiumarsi
Assistant Professor (January 2019)
Bahare Kiumarsi is interested in machine learning in control, security of cyber-physical systems, game theory, and distributed control of multi-agent systems.
EDUCATION: PhD, electrical engineering, University
of Texas at Arlington; MS, electrical engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran; BS, electrical engineering, Shahrood University of Technology, Iran
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Postdoctoral
research associate, University of Illinois
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
Michele Grimm
Wielenga Creative Engineering Endowed Professor (January 2019)
Michele Grimm spent the past 15 years focused on the biomechanics of neonatal brachial plexus injuries. A significant focus of her work at MSU is on innovations to improve engineering education research and injury biomechanics research.
She spent from 2016-2019 as the National Science Foundation program director for biomedical engineering.
EDUCATION: PhD and MS, bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania; BS, biomedical engineering
and engineering mechanics, Johns Hopkins University
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Associate professor, Wayne State University
Joerg Petrasch
Associate Professor (January 2019)
Joerg Petrasch is an entrepreneur and consulting engineer in the chemical, construction, and energy industries. His research interests are chemical storage of renewable energy, tomography-based numerical and experimental methods for
energy applications, micro-structured functional materials for energy applications.
EDUCATION: PhD, MS and BS, mechanical and process engineering, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT: Senior
fellow, Vorarlberg University of Applied Science, Austria
