Published: 
By  Bridget Moriarty

The University of Virginia is proud to welcome these outstanding new faculty members to our Engineering community. Their expertise deepens our strength in areas like artificial intelligence, biomechanics, medical imaging, hypersonics and thermal systems. As researchers, they address some of the most complex challenges in their fields while fostering collaboration across disciplines. We look forward to seeing what contributions they will make to our ongoing efforts in pioneering research and education, helping to build a world that is both great and good.

New Faculty for 2024

Somayeh Asadi is currently a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia. Prior to joining UVA, she was an Associate Professor with the Department of Architectural Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. She received M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees…

David B. Brown

Assistant Professor

David’s research group conducts experimental and theoretical studies of energy transport/conversion mechanisms and material properties across multiple length scales and temperature ranges. The primary motivation is the thermal management of hypersonic vehicles, electronic devices, and other engineering systems.

Kory Burns

Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering

Kory Burns is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering starting Summer 2024. Kory obtained a B.S. in Chemistry from Valdosta State University, an M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering (Nuclear Engineering Program).

Rohan Chandra

Assistant Professor, Computer Science

Rohan Chandra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. His research interests include multi-robot navigation, human-robot interaction, and autonomous driving. The overarching goal of his robotics lab is to design algorithms and systems that enable robots to navigate among humans, like humans.

Chen Chen

Assistant Professor, Computer Science

Chen Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Virginia. Before that, she was a Research Assistant Professor at Biocomplexity Institute at UVA and a software engineer at Google.

Zezhou Cheng

Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Research interests include: Computer Vision, Machine Learning, AI for Science Zezhou Cheng is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. His research interests include computer vision, machine learning, and their applications to ecology, material discovery, VR/AR, and…

Chen Cui

Assistant Professor

Chen Cui's current research interests are on spacecraft electric propulsion, space environment, and computational plasma physics. Chen Cui's work focuses on the high-fidelity, fully kinetic modeling of plasma dynamics in spacecraft electric propulsion thrusters, solar wind, and other applications related to low-temperature plasmas.

Shivani Datar

Lecturer, Computer Science

Matheus Venturyne Xavier Ferreira

Assistant Professor, Computer Science (Joining Summer 2024)

Jason Forman

Associate Professor

Jason Forman's research includes the development and biofidelity evaluation of anthropomorphic test devices, the execution of  impact biomechanics in simulated automobile environments, the development of injury risk functions with dummies and computational models, analysis for injury risk evaluation, and investigating the effects on injury risk.

Peter Griffiths

Assistant Professor
Dr. Griffiths’ primary interests are in researching and creating an engaging curriculum which provides a foundation for students’ future success in their engineering careers. He joined the University of Virginia faculty in 2024 as an Assistant Professor, Academic General Faculty to continue to…

David R. Gutierrez

Assistant Professor of Engineering, First Year Engineering Center

Assistant Professor of Engineering at the University of Virginia’s First Year Engineering Center.

Mathews Jacob

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Mathews Jacob is is an expert in machine learning algorithms for biomedical imaging. He develops advance magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods for brain, lung, and heart applications.

Henry Kautz

Professor, Computer Science
Henry Kautz a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. From 2018 to 2022 he served as Division Director for Information & Intelligent Systems (IIS) at the National Science Foundation, where he led the National AI Research Institutes program. He was the founding director of the…

Kelsey Kubelick

Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Kelsey Kubelick leverages light, sound, nanoconstruct design and cellular engineering strategies to develop advanced theranostic imaging platforms. With a special interest in ultrasound and photoacoustics, her lab creates imaging tools that play a critical role in informing, guiding and enhancing therapies across a range of biomedical applications.

Matthew McMillan

Assistant Professor, Academic General Faculty, Teaching Track, Applied Mathematics

Yu Meng

Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Research interests include: Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Data Mining Yu Meng received his Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2023, where he worked with Jiawei Han. Prior to joining UVA, he was also a visiting researcher at…

Shirin Provat, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Academic General Faculty, Teaching Track, Applied Mathematics
Shirin Provat joined the University of Virginia as an Assistant Professor in Applied Mathematics in Fall 2024. She completed her PhD in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Florida State University in the summer of 2024, becoming the first in her family to achieve this milestone. Her doctoral…

Kun Qian

Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Kun Qian is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. He is also a member of the Link Lab. Before joining UVA, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California San Diego. He received his Ph.D. and B.E. from Tsinghua University in 2019…

Karina Rider

Assistant Professor

Karina researches how people think about "good work" in the digital age. Trained as a sociologist, they use qualitative methods to get at how people critique technology and labor, and how they try to fix it. They are writing a book for MIT Press about what happens when high-status tech workers in Silicon Valley become disillusioned with their jobs.

Evan Scott

Thomas A. Saunders III Family Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished University Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Scott, renowned for his groundbreaking work in nanotechnology to address cancer, glaucoma, heart disease, and other conditions, is poised to join the Biomedical Engineering Department at UVA. He leads the Institute for Nanoscale Scientific and Technological Advanced Research (nanoSTAR) as part of…

Tengteng (Toni) Tang

Assistant Professor

Dr. Tang's research program centers on the structure-mechanics relationships of hierarchical biological materials and their clinical and biomedical applications. Many biological tissues, such as our own skeleton, perform a diverse range of functions with remarkable mechanical properties. These exceptional properties arise from the functional 

Phillip Taylor

Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering
Phillip A. Taylor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. After obtaining his B.S.E. and M.S.E. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, he completed a Ph.D. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware under the…

Rob Tieman, PE, PMP

Professor of Practice, Civil and Environmental Engineering

My career has focused on progressive management and engineering expertise that is concentrated in executive leadership of transportation projects, programs, and portfolios. 

Rupa S. Valdez

Professor of Systems and Information Engineering Professor of Public Health Sciences
My research focuses on understanding and designing solutions to support the ways in which people manage health at home and in the community, drawing on methods from multiple disciplines including human factors engineering, cultural anthropology, and health informatics, among others. My work…

Wenxi Wang

Assistant Professor, Computer Science

I completed my Ph.D. at University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Sarfraz Khurshid. During my Ph.D., I also closely collaborated with Kenneth McMillan and Darko Marinov. Prior to my Ph.D., I earned an MPhil (a research master's degree) from University of Melbourne, where I was supervised by Harald Søndergaard and Peter J. Stuckey.

Xiaoxuan Yang

Assistant Professor
Xiaoxuan Yang’s research focuses on emerging nonvolatile memory technologies, robustness and reliability enhancement in processing-in-memory designs, and hardware accelerators for deep learning applications. Xiaoxuan Yang is an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering at the…

Qiaochu Zhang

Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Qiaochu Zhang's research includes analog, mixed-signal, radio-frequency integrated circuits, computer-aided design algorithms, and advanced computing architectures. Dr. Zhang received the B.S. degree (Hons.) in physics from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 2017, and the Ph.D. degree in…