Fourteen Exceptional Faculty Join Engineering School Bioengineering Department Daniel T. Kamei - Assistant Professor Research Interests: Systems-level, engineering analysis of cellular processes, molecular modeling of ligand-receptor complexes, and quantitative experimental cell biology. PhD: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001 Dr. Kamei was most recently a Sloan Foundation/DOE postdoctoral research fellow in computational molecular biology at MIT. His research program at UCLA expands upon his postdoctoral work and is in the area of molecular cell bioengineering. Specifically, his research group develops and employs quantitative design principles obtained from a cell-level context to engineer more effective molecular therapeutics. The tools involved in rationally designing these therapeutics include molecular modeling and quantitative experiments. Jacob J. Schmidt - Assistant Professor Research Interests: Protein-based devices, molecular motors, and self-assembly, hybrid microsystems. PhD: University of Minnesota, 1999 Dr. Schmidt joined the Bioengineering Department in 2001 as a visiting assistant researcher and lecturer before being appointed an adjunct professor last year. His research in nanobiotechnology includes molecular motor-powered devices, measurement and manipulation of biomolecular motors, and membrane protein device engineering. Chemical Engineering Department Gerassimos Orkoulas - Assistant Professor Research Interests: Development of theoretical and molecular-based computer simulation techniques for the study of complex fluids and materials. PhD: Cornell University, 1998 Most recently, Dr. Orkoulas held a postdoctoral research associate position in chemical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Prior to that, he held postdoc positions at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Maryland. Orkoulas's research is centered on simulation techniques for the study of complex fluids, particularly phase transitions and critical phenomena in ionic fluids and mixtures. Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Terri S. Hogue - Assistant Professor Research Interests: Surface hydrology, hydroclimatology, rainfall-runoff modeling, operational flood forecasting, and land-atmosphere interactions in semi-arid regions. PhD: University of Arizona, 2003 Dr. Hogue comes to UCLA from the University of Arizona, where she received her PhD in hydrology and water resources. Her research background includes investigation and application of optimization techniques to rainfall-runoff and land-surface modeling, and application and integration of these methods into operational flood forecasting. She is also interested in land-atmosphere interactions in semi-arid climates, with special emphasis on modeling surface fluxes in these regions. This research provides insight into the hydrologic cycle and possible response of the cycle to climate change, critical to planning future requirements of water resources. Computer Science Department Rafail Ostrovsky - Professor Research Interests: Theory of computation, especially in cryptography and distributed algorithms, efficiency of secure multiparty computation, algorithms for high-dimensional geometric problems such as clustering and nearest-neighbor search, and routing and flow control in communication networks. PhD: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992 Dr. Ostrovsky comes to UCLA from Telcordia Technologies (previously Bell Communications Research), where he was a senior research scientist in the Math Sciences Research Center of Information and Computer Sciences Applied Research organization. Prior to beginning his career at Telcordia, he was an NSF Mathematical Sciences postdoctoral research fellow at UC Berkeley. His research centers on various issues in theoretical computer science, with primary interest in computer security, cryptography, distributed algorithms, and high-dimensional search problems. Ostrovsky is a winner of the 1993 Henry Taub Prize, and three-time winner of the best published work of the year (1999, 2001, 2002) at SAIC in computer science and mathematics (SAIC is Telcordia's parent company with over 40,000 engineers and scientists). He holds seven patents in the field. Jens Palsberg - Professor Research Interests: Compilers, embedded systems, programming languages, software engineering, and information security. PhD: University of Aarhus, Denmark, 1992 Prior to joining UCLA, Dr. Palsberg was a professor and associate head of Computer Science at Purdue University. The goal of most of his research is the discovery of principles and techniques that enable easier writing and understanding of programs, more reliable reasoning about the correctness and safety of programs, and faster and more portable implementations of programs. He received an NSF CAREER Award in 1998, and a Purdue University Faculty Scholar Award in 1999. In 2001, he was named one of the Ten Best Teachers of Undergraduates in the School of Science at Purdue. Eddie Kohler - Assistant Professor Research Interests: Systems, networks, programming languages, and software engineering. PhD: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000 Most recently, Dr. Kohler held a postdoctoral fellow and researcher position at the ICSI Center for Internet Research. He is also chief scientist and cofounder of Mazu Networks, a network security company whose first product was based on his Click modular router. His research interests include systems, networks, programming languages, and software engineering -- or, more generally, readable systems: building fast component systems that are more flexible and correct because they are more fun to program. In another life, he wrote several short plays and composed music for MIT campus theater. He will join the UCLA faculty in January 2004. Rupak Majumdar - Assistant Professor Research Interests: Software verification and program analysis, computer-aided verification and control of reactive, real-time, hybrid, and probabilistic systems, and logic and automata theory. PhD: University of California, Berkeley, 2003 Dr. Majumdar was most recently part of the Electronic Systems Design group at UC Berkeley. He is interested in formal verification, specifically developing new methods of model checking that can be applied to software and embedded systems. He received his Bachelor's of Technology in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur. He will join the UCLA faculty in January 2004. Todd Millstein - Assistant Professor Research Interests: Programming language design and implementation, formal methods, and database systems. PhD: University of Washington, 2003 Dr. Millstein was a member of the University of Washington's Cecil group, which focuses on constructing practical languages and tools that make software systems easier to write, maintain, and understand. He was also an intern in the SLAM group at Microsoft Research and the Extended Static Checking group at the former Compaq Systems Research Center. As an undergraduate at Brown University, Millstein received both the William Gaston Premium Scholarship for Excellence in Computer Science and the William Weston Prize for Excellence in Instrumental Music. He will join the UCLA faculty in January 2004. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department Yong Chen - Professor Research Interests: Nanofabrication, nanoscale electronic materials, devices, and circuits, micron-nano electronic/ optical/bio/mechanical systems, and ultra-scale spatial and temporal characterization. PhD: University of California, Berkeley, 1996 Dr. Chen was a master scientist in Quantum Science Research at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories before joining the UCLA faculty. While at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories he fabricated the world's highest density (40Gbits/inch2) electronic memory circuits. His research is focused on nanoscale science and engineering for nanofabrication methods, nanoscale memory and logic materials, devices, and circuits, optical and bio MEMS, and NEMS. In 2002, he was named as one of Scientific American's top 50 science and technology visionaries. Jeff D. Eldredge - Assistant Professor Research Interests: Fluid mechanics and acoustics, interaction of fluid flow and sound, and particle-based computational techniques. PhD: California Institute of Technology, 2002 Dr. Eldredge most recently held a postdoctoral research position in the Cambridge University Department of Engineering where he investigated the damping of acoustic waves using perforated liners and other damping devices, which are of importance to the performance of industrial gas turbines and jet engines. For his PhD thesis, he developed the first Lagrangian numerical method for solving the full compressible Navier-Stokes equations, providing a new perspective for learning how sound is generated by fluid flows. Yongho "Sungtaek" Ju - Assistant Professor Research Interests: Micro- and nanoscale thermal and fluidic phenomena, and nanofabrication. PhD: Stanford University, 1999 Dr. Ju was a research staff member at IBM before joining the UCLA faculty. His research projects included thermal characterization and engineering of micro- and nanoscale devices for information processing, storage, and communication applications; development and characterization of ultrathin films for thermal, magnetic, and biological devices; and novel processing techniques and materials for nano-device fabrication. H. Pirouz Kavehpour - Assistant Professor Research Interests: Microfluidics and biofluidics, micro- and nano-heat guides, complex fluids, and non-isothermal flows. PhD: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003 Dr. Kavehpour previously held a joint post doctoral associate position at MIT's Hatsopoulos Microfluids Laboratory and the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, researching lubricity and rheology of complex fluids in microfluidic devices and high speed fiber coating processes. He is also interested in developing noninvasive measurement methods, transport phenomena in micro- and nanoscale systems, and physics of contact line phenomena in complex fluids. William S. Klug - Assistant Professor Research Interests: Computational structural and solid mechanics, computational biomechanics, and micro/ nanomechanics of biological systems. PhD: California Institute of Technology, 2003 Dr. Klug, who received his Master's in Civil Engineering from UCLA, was most recently part of the Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories at Caltech. His research focuses on theoretical and computational modeling of the structural mechanics of biological systems. His research interests include methods of obtaining coarse-grained mechanical descriptions of proteins and nucleic acids, continuum modeling of DNA, and nonlinear analysis of thin shells.