Faculty promotions in the School of Engineering

Luisa Chiesa, Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Luisa Chiesa was promoted to full professor and has been at Tufts since 2009. Her primary research interest is superconducting materials for energy applications. Her current research focus is the electro-mechanical behavior of superconducting materials for large magnets used in fusion power devices. Chiesa’s lab specializes in electrical and mechanical measurements of superconducting materials. 

Yu-Ting Dingle, Lecturer, Biomedical Engineering

Yu-Ting Dingle was appointed as a lecturer. Her PhD and postdoctoral work focused on 3D in vitro modeling of the brain involving the use of a bioengineered silk/collagen composite scaffolding material. In addition to teaching, Dingle has a passion for visual scientific communication. Her illustrations have been featured in esteemed journals, including Nature Reviews Chemistry and Advanced Materials. 

Mark Hempstead, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Mark Hempstead heads the Tufts Computer Architecture Lab at Tufts and was promoted to full professor. His research has been applied to a range of platforms, including embedded systems, the Internet of Things, chip multiprocessors, and high performance computing. He earned his BS at Tufts in 2003 and joined the core faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an associate professor in 2015. 

Liping Liu, Associate Professor, Computer Science

Liping Liu previously held the Schwartz Family Faculty Development Professorship in Computer Science and is now a tenured associate professor. He is interested in probabilistic modeling and graph learning within the area of machine learning. His work in machine learning techniques applies to ecology studies, spatial data modeling, and chemical data analysis. 

Jivko Sinapov, Associate Professor, Computer Science

From 2017-2022, Jivko Sinapov held the James Schmolze Assistant Professorship. This year, he received tenure and was promoted to associate professor. Sinapov's research interests include developmental robotics, computational perception, autonomous manipulation, and human-robot interaction. In his PhD research, Sinapov developed novel methods for behavioral object exploration and multi-modal perception.

Brian Timko, Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Newly tenured and promoted to associate professor, Brian Timko has taught and conducted research at Tufts since 2016. His interests lie at the intersection of materials science, chemistry, and biology, with a focus on nanotechnology and nanoscale interfaces between solid-state and biological systems. His laboratory employs a bottom-up paradigm in its research. 

James Van Deventer, Associate Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering 

James Van Deventer joined Tufts in 2015 and previously held the title of Bright Futures Assistant Professor. Now a tenured associate professor, his laboratory is currently focused on disrupting enzymatic and signaling processes within the tumor microenvironment and enhancing the chemical versatility of yeast in order to support the discovery of inhibitors.