UCLA Engineering: UCLA Engineer Magazine

UCLA Engineering Recruits Five New Faculty Members

Talented researchers and educators are at the center of any successful university - they are critical to attracting and educating exceptional students, as well as to dynamic research programs. This year, the School successfully recruited five new gifted educators who will continue our tradition of excellence.

Civil and Environmental Engineering Department

Assistant Professor Jian Zhang
PhD – University of California, Berkeley, 2002

Professor Jian Zhang’s research interests include earthquake engineering, structural dynamics, and mechanics, with an emphasis on the modeling, analysis, and protection of structural systems under seismic/dynamic excitations. Her current research activities focus on performance evaluation of bridges and buildings through experiments and model-based simulations, and earthquake hazard mitigation through innovative devices, systems, and technologies.

Prior to joining UCLA, Zhang was an assistant professor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In 2003, she was a short-term invitation fellow for the Japan Society for Promotion of Science.

Electrical Engineering

Professor Alan J. Laub
Joint appointment with mathematics
PhD – University of Minnesota, 1974

Professor Alan Laub is a recognized expert in control theory, numerical linear algebra, advanced computing, and computer-aided control system design, especially algorithms for control and filtering.

He has been appointed director of UCLA’s Institute for Digital Research and Education, an advanced interdisciplinary simulation and visualization center.

Laub was formerly Dean of the College of Engineering at UC Davis, and director of the Scientific Discovery through Advancing Computing program at the Department of Energy. He is a fellow of IEEE and a member of SIAM and ACM.

Assistant Professor Christoph Niemann
PhD – Technische Universität Darmstadt, 2002

Professor Christoph Niemann’s areas of research include laser plasma interactions, plasmas in thermonuclear fusion, plasma diagnostics, and high-energy density physics.

Niemann comes to UCLA from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, where he held a research staff position. While at the national laboratory, he conducted experiments on laser plasma coupling and scattering instabilities in ignition scale length plasmas for the National Ignition Facility (NIF).

Assistant Professor Mihaela Van der Schaar
PhD – Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, 2001

Professor Mihaela van der Schaar's areas of research include multimedia signal processing and compression, networking, information theory and systems architecture. Current research projects include the theory and design of novel algorithms, standards and systems for multimedia coding, cross-layer optimized wireless multimedia transmission systems, new paradigms for wireless multimedia communication systems with resource and information exchanges, game-theoretic approaches for multimedia transmission over enterprise networks and peer-to-peer networks, and dynamic resource management for multimedia applications on embedded systems.

Prior to joining the electrical engineering faculty at UCLA, she was a member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UC Davis and before that a Senior Research Scientist at Philips Research USA and the Netherlands. She has received an NSF Career Award, IBM Faculty Award and two ISO awards for her contributions to the MPEG video standard.

Materials Science and Engineering

Assistant Professor Ioanna Kakoulli
Joint appointment in the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archeology
PhD – University of Oxford, England

Professor Ioanna Kakoulli, a member of the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program, is a specialist in artwork diagnostic technologies. Her current research interests focus on the technology of the manufacture of ancient pigments and the study of artifacts using non-invasive methods of examination and analysis exploring the potentials of spectral imaging technologies. In addition to research in the materials and preservation of wall and canvas paintings, she has also conducted research in the conservation science of porous materials.

Prior to joining UCLA faculty, Kakoulli worked at Artwork Diagnostic Technologies and was a senior conservation scientist at the Malta Centre for Restoration.