UCLA Engineering Adds Talented New Faculty

The strength of any great engineering program lies in its people. The educators and researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science are vital to the School’s continued success. This fall, a number of talented individuals will join our faculty, coming to UCLA from institutions across the country:

Bioengineering

Assistant Professor Andrea Kasko
PhD – The University of Akron, 2004

Professor Andrea Kasko's research applies structural hierarchy to the design of new materials for biomedical applications. She is interested in designing new materials from the nanoscale to the macroscale, with control over the chemical and physical properties at multiple levels, to better replicate the critical aspects of physiological materials and processes.

Prior to joining UCLA, Kasko was a post-doctoral research associate with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, working at the University of Colorado, Boulder.


Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Professor Yunfeng Lu
PhD - University of New Mexico, 1998

Professor Yunfeng Lu is researching nanostructures that often endow materials with unique and superior mechanical, electronic, magnetic, and optical properties. He is especially interested in the synthesis and self-assembly of nanostructured materials for device applications.

Previously, Lu was the Brown Chair Professor in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Tulane University.


Computer Science

Assistant Professor Eleazar Eskin
Joint appointment in the Department of Human Genetics
PhD – Columbia University, 2002

Professor Eleazar Eskin's research interests are in the relationship between genetic variation and disease in humans at the intersection of genetics, genomics and bioinformatics. Through computational analyses of human variation data, he is working to understand the genetic basis of human disease.

Prior to joining UCLA, Eskin was an Assistant Professor in Residence in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the University of California, San Diego. He is also affiliated with California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).


Electrical Engineering

Assistant Professor Dejan Markovic
PhD - University of California, Berkeley, 2006

Professor Markovic's research is focused on power/area-efficient digital integrated circuits and VLSI architectures for wireless communications, including optimization methods and supporting CAD flows.

While at UC Berkeley, he was part of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center.

Assistant Professor Paulo Tabuada
PhD – Institute for Systems and Robotics,
Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, 2002

Professor Paulo Tabuada’s research focuses on correct-by-design methods for real-time, networked, embedded control systems. He works at the interface between control theory and computer science developing automated design techniques, addressing real-time, networking, control and software specifications in an integrated fashion. He also maintains an interest in mathematical systems and control theory.

Tabuada comes to UCLA from the University of Notre Dame’s electrical engineering department.

Assistant Professor Benjamin Williams
PhD – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003

Professor Benjamin Williams' research interests include the development of terahertz quantum cascade lasers, and the development of terahertz components based of subwavelength dimension for use in beam control, sensing, and imaging. Also of interest is the development of intersubband and intersublevel devices in low-dimensional nanostructures for electronic and optoelectronic applications.

Prior to joining UCLA, Williams was a postdoctoral researcher in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT.


Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Assistant Professor Eric P.Y. Chiou
PhD – University of California, Berkeley, 2005

Professor Eric Chiou's research interests include bio- and nanophotonics, microfluidics, and lab-on-a-chip systems. His invention of optoelectronic tweezers (OET) has enabled a new way to manipulate fluids, cells, and biomolecules using direct optical images.

Chiou received his MS from UCLA in electrical engineering.