UCLA Engineering adds New Faculty

This year, seven talented researchers and teachers have joined the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. These new faculty members bring a diverse range of expertise in several emerging fields.


Electrical Engineering

Assistant Professor Danijela Cabric
PhD – University of California, Berkeley, 2007

Professor Cabric's research includes physical and network layer design for cognitive radios for opportunistic spectrum sharing; cognitive radio algorithms and architectures for spectrum sensing; adaptive transmission and spatial processing; and the development of wireless testbeds to support physical and network experiments.

While at UC Berkeley, she was part of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center. She earned her M.S. in electrical engineering at UCLA.


Assistant Professor Chi On Chui
PhD – Stanford University, 2004

Professor Chi On Chui’s current research focuses on heterostructure semiconductor physics and technology involving the application of novel device concepts and fabrication techniques to explore the quantum-mechanical and strain effects at the nanoscale.


Prior to joining UCLA, Chui was a consulting assistant professor at Stanford University and an Intel researcher-in-residence.


Assistant Professor Puneet Gupta
PhD – University of California, San Diego, 2007

Professor Puneet Gupta’s research focuses on VLSI CAD, with an emphasis on the interface between physical design and manufacturing.

Prior to joining UCLA, Gupta was a graduate student at UC San Diego where he received the IBM PhD fellowship. He is also a co-founder and product architect for Blaze, DFM Inc., a Sunnyvale-based company that develops and delivers electrical design-for-manufacturing solutions for integrated device manufacturers, fabless semiconductor companies, and silicon foundries.


Associate Professor Diana L. Huffaker
Joint appointment with the California NanoSystems Institute
PhD – University of Texas at Austin, 1994

Professor Diana L. Huffaker’s research is in novel nanoscale epitaxy including patterned and self-assembled processes for device development. Her current research projects focus on quantum dot-based opto-electronic devices including silicon photonics, lasers, nanotransistors and solar cells. Huffaker is jointly appointed to the California NanoSystems Institute and will direct the Integrated NanoMaterials Core Facility.

Prior to joining UCLA, Huffaker was an associate professor at the University of New Mexico and director of the UNM Nanoscience and Microsystems fellowship program. In 2005-06, she was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at Technical University, Berlin.

Assistant Professor Aydogan Ozcan
PhD – Stanford University, 2005

Professor Aydogan Ozcan's research focuses on photonics and its applications in nano- and bio-technology. His interests include imaging the nano-world, especially in bio-compatible settings; providing powerful solutions to global health related problems such as measuring cell counts of HIV patients in resource-limited settings; advanced detection of molecular level binding events; targeting microarray based proteomics and genomics; and monitoring 3-D engineered tissues.

Prior to joining UCLA, Ozcan was an instructor at Harvard Medical School. He holds several patents for inventions in nanoscopy, wide-field imaging, nonlinear optics, fiber optics and optical coherence tomography.


Materials Science and Engineering

Assistant Professor Suneel Kodambaka
PhD – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2002

Professor Kodambaka's research aims to develop the science underlying the controlled synthesis of advanced materials for applications in the areas of energy storage, optoelectronics, thermoelectrics, and hard coatings. His group uses a wide variety of in-situ microscopy tools to study the growth of semiconducting nanowires; kinetics of facetting on catalytic surfaces; and thin film physics of organic semiconductors and hydrogen storage materials.

Prior to joining UCLA, Kodambaka was a post-doctoral researcher at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, New York.


Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Professor Christopher Lynch
PhD – University of California, Santa Barbara, 1992

Professor Christopher Lynch's research interests include the behavior and applications of multi-field coupled materials. These include materials like ferroelectrics that change shape under an applied electric field. Modeling interests involve developing and applying techniques that bridge multiple scales of length and time. The applications range from sonar systems to micro motors to active vibration suppression and active composites

Prior to joining UCLA, Lynch was an associate chair for administration and a professor of mechanical engineering at The Georgia Institute of Technology. Lynch is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He has received a National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.