Faculty

Faculty

Department Faculty

Jason Rife

Professor and Chair of Mechanical Engineering

navigation, safety-critical transportation systems, state estimation, human-robot interaction

Nadine Aubry

Professor and Senior Advisor to the Dean of Engineering

Fluid dynamics, turbulence, reduced modeling of complex systems, dynamical systems theory, chaotic mixing, microfluidics, electrohydrodynamics, manipulation and assembly of nanoscale particles in microfluidics, biofluids

Briana Bouchard

Assistant Teaching Professor

Product Design, Educational Robotics, Mechanical Design, Engineering Education, Electronic Portfolios & Assessment

Luisa Chiesa

sustainable energy, superconducting materials, materials science

Ryan Cosner

Visiting Assistant Professor

Ryan's research lies at the intersection of control theory, machine learning, and robotics, with the goal of enabling provably safe and dynamic robot autonomy in uncertain real-world settings. His work bridges theory and practice through the development of risk-aware control frameworks, efficient deployable algorithms, and validation on a wide range of robot platforms. His ultimate goal is to create safety methods that inspire trust and provide us with the confidence needed to deploy high-performance autonomous robots at scale. **Recruiting new PhD students for admission in Fall 2026.**

Tong Gao

Associate Professor

Tong (Tony) Gao conducts research across fluid mechanics, soft matter, and materials using mathematical modeling and simulation. His work explores fluid-structure interactions to reveal fundamental mechanisms in complex fluid-solid systems and drive innovations in energy conversion, robotics, and biomedical applications. He specializes in developing and integrating high-performance computational tools for large-scale simulations, enabling multiscale modeling and analysis.

Jeffrey Guasto

biophysics and soft matter, microscale fluid mechanics and transport phenomena, microfluidic devices

Daniel Hannon

Professor of the Practice

human factors, airspace systems

Trevion Henderson

Assistant Professor

Engineering education; Diversity, equity, and inclusion; team-based engineering pedagogies; engineering design thinking

Marc Hodes

heat transfer, apparent slip, thermal management of electronics, mass transfer in supercritical fluids and thermoelectricity, material science

Felix Huang

human factors, human motor learning, human motor control, neuro-rehabilitation, robotics, virtual reality, surgery skill training

James Intriligator

Professor of the Practice

Human Factors Engineering, Innovation, Design Thinking, AI-powered Innovation and R&D, Human Machine System Design, Robotics, Machine Learning, Perception, Psychology

Mark Kachanov

Mechanics of materials; effective properties of heterogeneous materials; microstructure-property relationships; applications to material science

Erica Kemmerling

Associate Teaching Professor

Fluid mechanics, flow in the human body, hemodynamics, aneurysms, heart development, flow in tumors, cardiac assist devices

Golriz Kermani

Assistant Teaching Professor

Material characterization, lithium-ion batteries, tissue biomechanics, and engineering education

Hungtang Ko

Visiting Assistant Professor

Hungtang Ko's research focuses on the collective organization of biological collectives and robot swarms in fluid environments. He conducts animal experiments, simulates agent-based models, and designs biomimetic robots to investigate the physical interaction among insect swarms and fish schools. Beyond his core research, his diverse research interests extend to traffic flow, animal biomechanics, and the physics of wok tossing. **Recruiting new PhD students for admission in Fall 2026**

Hoda Koushyar

Assistant Teaching Professor

biomechanics, applied mechanics, materials characterization, engineering education

Gary Leisk

Teaching Professor

machine design, nondestructive testing

Douglas Matson

solidification processes, thermal manufacturing, machine design, materials science

Dave Miller

Assistant Teaching Professor

Human-technology collaboration, cooperation, and conflict; moral decision-making; mental models; engineering ethics

Markus Nemitz

Assistant Professor

Pushing towards his vision of rapidly designing robots and materializing them at points of impact, Prof. Nemitz's research interests encompass 3D-printable robots, real-time adaptive additive manufacturing, and automated discovery processes for robotic materials.

Chris Rogers

John R. Beaver Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Engineering Education, Human Robot Interaction, Mechanical Engineering, Music Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing

Anil Saigal

materials engineering, materials science, manufacturing processes, quality control

Igor Sokolov

Present: Engineering for Health -> Physics of cancer and aging -> Mechanics of biomaterials at the nanoscale, Synthesis and study of functional nanomaterials for biomedical imaging and drug delivery, Advanced imaging for medical diagnostics, Novel processes and materials for dentistry: nano-polishing and self-healing materials. Favorite experimental techniques: atomic force microscopy/scanning probe microscopy, confocal microscopy and spectroscopy, nanoindenters. Favorite theoretical methods: contact models, machine learning methods. Past: quantum field theory, theory of gravity, cosmology, Casimir effect.

Kristen Wendell

Associate Professor

learning sciences, engineering education, design practices, classroom discourse, engineering knowledge construction

Robert White

Associate Professor

Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) fabrication, modeling, and testing. Particularly acoustic MEMS (microphones, ultrasound), and aerodynamic measurement technologies (skin friction sensors, aeroacoustic sensors). Acoustics, vibrations, dynamics and controls. Electromechanical systems including robotics. Finite element methods and system modeling. Electronics for measurement. Mechanical measurements.

Michael Wiklund

Professor of the Practice

human factors

Michael Zimmerman

Professor of the Practice

novel polymer electrolytes for batteries, liquid crystal polymers, composite materials, materials science

Secondary Appointments

Karen Panetta

Distinguished Professor and Dean of Graduate Education

Signal processing; image processing; simulation modeling

Abani Patra

Center Director for Data Science of TIAI, Professor of Computer Science and Math

computational sciences, data driven modeling

Greses Pérez

McDonnell Family Assistant Professor of Engineering Education

cognition and learning sciences, science education, engineering education, diversity and identity, technology and education, language and cognition, multicompetence

Matthias Scheutz

Karol Family Applied Technology Professor

Artificial intelligence, artificial life, cognitive modeling, foundations of cognitive science, human-robot interaction, multi-scale agent-based models, natural language understanding.

Elaine Short

Assistant Professor

human-robot interaction, accessibility, robotics, human-in-the-loop machine learning, assistive technology Applying human-centered design and disability community values to the development, deployment, and evaluation of AI and machine learning for robotics, including: human-centered human-in-the-loop machine learning; disability-friendly assistive robotics; autonomous HRI in groups, public spaces, and other human-human contexts; and accessibility and disability inclusion in robotics education and the computing research community.

Jivko Sinapov

Associate Professor

Artificial Intelligence, Developmental Robotics, Computational Perception, Robotic Manipulation, Machine Learning, Human-Robot and Human-Computer Interaction

Deborah Sunter

Assistant Professor

Science focused on energy, development and environmental management. Computational modeling of electrical grid integration of renewable energy and storage. Interaction of science and policy in academia, industry and government

Holly Taylor

Moses Hunt Professor of Psychology

Spatial Cognition, Applied Cognition.

Thomas Vandervelde

Professor and Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Interaction of light with matter, physics of nanostructures and interfaces, metamaterials, material science, plasmonics, and surfactants, semiconductor photonics and electronics, epitaxial crystal growth, materials and devices for energy and infrared applications.

Part-time Lecturers

Dennis Anderson

Part-time Lecturer

David Aurelio

Part-time Lecturer

Engineering/applied psychology, consumer product design, usability metrics, information visualization, and research field methods.

Maxwell Bischoff

Part-time Lecturer

industrial design, design strategy, interaction design, UI, UX

Linda Borghesani

Part-time Lecturer

Human Factors, user interface design, user research, usability testing, heuristic & expert evaluations, concept testing, card sort/IA studies, benchmarking/competitive studies, customer experience, diary studies, mobile devices, customer research, strategic insights, journey mapping, user personas, design thinking workshops

Gian Calise

Part-time Lecturer

Alexandria Carlson

Part-time Lecturer

Divya Chandra

Part-time Lecturer

Jordan Cox

Part-time Lecturer

Bradley Duncan

Part-time Lecturer

Sami Durrani

Part-time Lecturer

Daniel Fox

Part-time Lecturer

Nicholas Katis

Part-time Lecturer

Steven Langel

Part-time Lecturer

Chaiwoo Lee

Part-time Lecturer

Kelsey Rogers

Part-time Lecturer

architectural acoustics, acoustical simulation

Jason Ryan

Part-time Lecturer

Brandon Stafford

Manager, Nolop FAST Facility

Zosia Stafford

Part-time Lecturer

Ken Tango

Part-time Lecturer

Haroula Tzamaras

Part-time Lecturer

Ryan Wexler

Part-time Lecturer

Affiliate Faculty

Joel Huegel

Visiting Professor

Pratap Misra

GPS, emerging satellite navigation systems

Jianmin Qu

Adjunct Professor

micromechanics of composites, interfacial fracture and adhesion, fatigue and creep damage in solder alloys, thermomechanical reliability of microelectronic packaging, defects and transport in solids with applications to solid oxide fuel cells and batteries, ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation of advanced engineering materials, material science

Emeriti

Behrouz Abedian

Associate Professor Emeritus

Fluid Mechanics, Rheology, Electrohydrodynamics, Fluidic devices.

William Crochetiere

Professor Emeritus

Robert Greif

Professor Emeritus

John Kreifeldt

Professor Emeritus

Benjamin Perlman

Professor Emeritus