ASSOCIATE PROFESSORS (LE2AP PARTICIPANTS)

100% OF SUBMITTED TENURE REVIEW PACKAGES WERE SUCCESSFUL

2024

Amir Alavi head shot

Amir Alavi

Title: Associate Professor
Primary Department: Civil & Environmental Engineering
Secondary Department: Bioengineering
Email: ALAVI@pitt.edu
Lab Website

Research Interests: Intelligent Structures, Architected Materials, Self-Powered Sensors, Engineering Informatics

katherine hornbostel

Katherine Hornbostel

Title: Associate Professor
Primary Department: Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Email: hornbostel@pitt.edu
Lab Website

Research Interests: Carbon Capture Modeling, Membrane Modeling, Direct Air Capture Solid Sorbent Modeling, Novel Hybrid Direct Air Capture Process Modeling

2023

hhessam babee

Hessam Babaee

Title: Associate Professor, CNG Faculty Fellow
Primary Department: Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Email: h.babaee@pitt.edu
Lab Website

Research Interests: Computational Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer, Flow Instability, High Performance Computing, Multi-Fidelity Modeling, Multi-Physics Modeling, Stochastic Modeling, Reduced-Order Modeling, Uncertainty Quantification, Physics-Informed Machine Learning, Combustion

mostafa bedewy head shot

Mostafa Bedewy

Title: Associate Professor
Primary Department: Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Secondary Department: Chemical & Petroleum Engineering, Industrial Engineering
Email: mbedewy@pitt.edu
Lab Website

Research Interests: Advanced Manufacturing, Nano- & Micro-Fabrication, Flexible Electronics, Cybermanufacturing and Data Analytics, In Situ Measurements, Laser Processes, Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), Graphene, Carbon Nanotubes and Related Nanomaterials, Biology-Assisted Manufacturing, Origami And Kirigami Engineering, Patterning/Processing of Biomolecules and Biointerfaces, Surface Engineering and Coating Technology, Bottom-Up Synthesis and Self-Assembly, Design and Mechanics of Surgical Tools, Medical Devices and Healthcare Materials

tagbo niepa

Tagbo Niepa

Title: Associate Professor , *Currently Professor at Carnegie Mellon University
Primary Department: Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Secondary Department: Bioengineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Email: tniepa@andrew.cmu.edu
Lab Website
LinkedIn

Research Interests: Infection Control Strategies, Biointerface, Microbiome Engineering

2022

james mckone

James McKone

Title: Associate Professor
Primary Department: Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Email: jmckone@pitt.edu
Lab Website

Research Interests: Electrochemistry, Catalysis, Energy, Sustainability, Materials

carla ng head shot

Carla Ng (Baumel)

Title: Associate Professor
Primary Department: Civil & Environmental Engineering
Secondary Department: Bioengineering, Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Email: carla.ng@pitt.edu
Lab Website

Research Interests: Bioaccumulation, Ecosystem Modeling, Environmental Fate and Exposure Modeling, Chemical Hazard and Risk Assessment, Biological Fate and Toxicity of Per- and Polyfluorinated Alkyl Substances (PFAS), Modeling and Evaluation of Green Infrastructure Networks in Urban Environments

jason shoemaker

Jason Shoemaker

Title: Associate Professor
Primary Department: Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Email: jason.shoemaker@pitt.edu
Lab Website

Research Interests: Disease Modeling, Therapy Optimization, AI-Guided Drug Discovery, Computational Modeling, Systems Immunology, Machine Learning, Systems Biology

feng xiong

Feng Xiong

Title: Associate Professor
Primary Department: Electrical & Computer Engineering
Secondary Department: Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Lab Website

Research Interests: Energy-Efficient Electronics, Flexible/Wearable Electronics, Next-Generation Memory Devices (RRAM and PCM), Neuromorphic Computing, 1D And 2D Materials, Nanoscale Thermal Transport and Renewable Energy Harvesting

wei xiong head shot

WEI XIONG

Title: Associate Professor, William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow
Primary Department: Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Email: weixiong@pitt.edu
Lab Website

Research Interests: Physical Metallurgy, Advanced Manufacturing, 3D Printing, Computational Materials Design, High-Throughput Experiments, Machine Learning

liang shan

LIANG ZHAN

Title: Associate Professor
Primary Department: Electrical & Computer Engineering
Secondary Department: Bioengineering
Email: liang.zhan@pitt.edu
Lab Website

Research Interests: Computational Neuroimaging, Mathematic Modeling, Brain MRI, Connectome and Brain Diseases

2021

leanne gilberston

Leanne Gilbertson

Title: Associate Professor, Currently Professor at Duke University
Primary Department: Civil & Environmental Engineering
Email: leanne.gilbertson@duke.edu
Lab Website

Research Interests: Sustainable Material Design, Life Cycle Assessment of Emerging Technologies, Nanotechnology, Green Engineering, Sustainable Agriculture, Mechanisms of Interactions at the Material-Bio Interface

Takashi Kozai head shot

Takashi Kozai

Title: Associate Professor
Primary Department: Bioengineering
Email: tdk18@pitt.edu 
Lab Website

Research Interests: Neurostimulation, Neuromodulation, Neurocomputation, Elucidating how biological structures and biochemical pathways influence neurophysiology following injury and disease, as well as bidirectional communication between the nervous system and neural interface technology

sangyeop lee

Sangyeop Lee

Title: Associate Professor
Primary Department: Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Email: sylee@pitt.edu 
Lab Website

Research Interests: Heat Transfer in Small Scales, Solid State Energy Conversion- Thermoelectrics, Electrochemistry, Electrocalorics, Ab Initio Simulations Of Materials, Transport Phenomena of Heat, Charge and Mass- Simulation and Experimental Characterization of Nanoscale Transport, Thermal Transport in Novel Materials Including 2D Layered Materials, Phase Change Materials, Ferroelectric Materials and Soft Matters, Transport Phenomena at Interface, Multi-Scale Simulation from Nano to Macroscale, Thermal Management of Electronics.

2020

murat akcakaya

Murat Akcakaya

Title: Associate Professor
Primary Department: Electrical & Computer Engineering
Email: murat.akcakaya@gmail.com  
Lab Website

Research Interests: EEG-Based Brain Computer Interfaces, Physiological Signal Analysis, Machine Learning, Radar Signal Processing, Statistical Signal Processing

susan fullerton head shot

Susan Fullerton

Title: Associate Professor, Bicentennial Board of Visitors Faculty Fellow and Vice Chair for Graduate Education
Primary Department: Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Email: fullerton@pitt.edu  
Lab Website

Research Interests: Nanoelectronics, Transition Metal, Dichalcogenide, Graphene, Memory, 2D Materials, Ion Gating and Transport, Nanoionics, Polymer Electrolytes, Polymers

jington-hu

Jingtong Hu

Title: Associate Professor, William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow
Primary Department: Electrical & Computer Engineering
Email: JTHU@pitt.edu  
Lab Website

Research Interests: Hardware/Software Co-design, Embedded Systems, On-Device AI, Mobile Health

tevis jacobs head shot

Tevis Jacobs

Title: Associate Professor, William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow
Primary Department: Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Email: tjacobs@pitt.edu  
Lab Website

Research Interests: Surfaces and Interfaces, Nanoscale Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Advanced and In Situ Transmission Electron Microscopy

gelsy torres oviedo head shot

Gelsy Torres-Oviedo

Title: Associate Professor  
Primary Department: Bioengineering
Email: gelsyto@pitt.edu  
Lab Website

Research Interests: Sensorimotor Learning, Generalization and Dynamics of Motor Learning, Neurorehabilitation, Posture and Gait

christopher wilmer

Christopher Wilmer

Title: Associate Professor, William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow 
Primary Department: Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Secondary Department: Electrical & Computer Engineering
Email: WILMER@pitt.edu  
Lab Website

Research Interests: Computational Materials Discovery, Energy, Hypothetical Materials, Molecular Modeling, Electronic Noses

2019

bryan brown

Bryan Brown

Title: Associate Professor, Roberta Luxbacher Fellowship 
Primary Department: Bioengineering
Email: brownb@upmc.edu  
Lab Website

Research Interests: Host Response to Biomaterials, Macrophage Biology, Nerve Regeneration, Pelvic Floor, Scaffold Based Regenerative Medicine, Surgical Mesh, Temporomandibular Joint, Tissue Engineering, Women’s Health, Host Innate Immune Interactions in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

markus chmielus head shot

Markus Chmielus

Title: Associate Professor  
Primary Department: Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Email: chmielus@pitt.edu  
Lab Website

Research Interests: Additive Manufacturing, especially Binder Jet 3D Printing and Sintering, Magnetic Shape Memory Alloys (MSMA), Magnetocaloric Materials, Porous 3D Printed Structures, Metallic Thin Films

john keith head shot

John Keith

Title: Associate Professor, R.K Mellon Faculty Fellow in Energy 
Primary Department: Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Email: JAKEITH@pitt.edu  
Lab Website

Research Interests: Catalysis, Computational Chemistry, Materials, Renewable Energy

spandan maiti

Spandan Maiti

Title: Associate Professor  
Primary Department: Bioengineering
Secondary Department: Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Email: spm54@pitt.edu  

Research Interests: Advanced Numerical Techniques and Massively Parallel Simulations,Computational Biomechanics and Biomaterials, Deformation and Failure Response of Biological Materials, Hierarchical Materials and Systems, Design and Development of Multifunctional Materials and Systems, Multiscale and Multiphysics, Computational Mechanics and Materials Science, Multiscale and Multiphysics Techniques Applied to Physical and Biological Systems

giannis mpourmpakis head shot

Giannis Mpourmpakis

Title: Associate Professor, Bicentennial Alumni Faculty Fellow 
Primary Department: Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Email: GMPOURMP@pitt.edu  
Lab Website

Research Interests: Catalytic Processes on Metals and Metal Oxides, Computational Materials Discovery, Nanoparticle Growth, Multiscale Modeling, Catalysis, Nanoscience, Electrochemistry, Materials Growth, Machine Learning

warren ruder

Warren Ruder

Title: Associate Professor, William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow
Primary Department: Bioengineering
Email: WARRENR@pitt.edu  

Research Interests: 2nd-Messenger Signaling, Biomaterials, Microbiome and the Gut-Brain-Axis, Synthetic Biology, Synthetic Mammalian Signaling Networks

nitin sharma

Nitin Sharma

Title: Associate Professor *Currently Professor at North Carolina State University 
Primary Department: Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Email: nsharm23@ncsu.edu
Lab Website

2018

andrew bunger

Andrew Bunger

Title: Associate Professor, R.K Mellon Faculty Fellow in Energy 
Primary Department: Civil & Environmental Engineering
Secondary Department: Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Email: bunger@pitt.edu  

Research Interests: Geological Engineering, Core Discing, Emplacement Mechanics of Magma Intrusions, Fracture Mechanics, Hydraulic Fracturing, Interaction Between Shale Formations and Drilling Fluids, Poroelasticity

bo zeng

Bo Zeng

Title: Associate Professor  
Primary Department: Industrial Engineering
Email: bzeng@pitt.edu 
Lab Website

Research Interests: Cutting Plane Methods, Mixed Integer Programming, Multilevel Optimization, Robust Optimization, High Performance Computing Applications and Practice

2017

youngjae chun

Youngjae Chun

Title: Associate Professor  
Primary Department: Industrial Engineering
Secondary Department: Bioengineering
Email: yjchun@pitt.edu  
Lab Website

Research Interests: Novel Thromboresistant Thin Film Nickel Titanium (NITI) covered stent to treat peripheral arterial disease, Novel wireless flow sensor to monitor cerebral aneurysm hemodynamic quiescence, Smart angioplasty balloon catheter system both for accurate detection of balloon-vessel wall contact and versatile treatment, Smart growing percutaneous pediatric heart valve, Film lapping machining with diamond abrasives for vehicle’s piston pin, Manufacturing and evaluation of multi-use grinding of CBN wheel for vehicle’s engine valve, Multifunctional surface engineering using severe plastic deformation in machining-based processes

ervin sejdic

Ervin SejdiĆ

Title: Associate Professor   *Currently Professor at the University of Toronto
Primary Department: Electrical & Computer Engineering
Secondary Department: Bioengineering
Email: ervin.sejdic@utoronto.ca
Lab Website

2016

paul leu

Paul Leu

Title: Associate Professor, B.P. America Faculty Fellow 
Primary Department: Industrial Engineering
Secondary Department: Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Email: pleu@pitt.edu  
Lab Website

Research Interests: Micro/Nanomanufacturing, Nanophotonics, Nanoelectronics, Nanostructure Synthesis/Self-Assembly, Antibacterial and Medical Surfaces, Solar Cells, Ab Initio Modeling of Nanomaterials and Surfaces, Combining Physical Simulations with Optimization Methods