A recent surge in hiring—11 new faculty members across four departments—will have a widespread impact on research and teaching at the Rossin College and support the interdisciplinary mission of Lehigh’s Institute for Data, Intelligent Systems, and Computation (I-DISC).
“We have faculty coming in who are doing groundbreaking work in robotics, data science and machine learning, cybersecurity, and social media, among other fields,” says computer science and engineering professor Héctor Muñoz-Avila, who also serves as co-director of I-DISC, a hub for interdisciplinary research. “These are very current directions followed by people everywhere that have natural connections to our institute’s research themes.”
It’s an especially exciting time for Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) with three new professors of practice, three assistant professors, and a new department chair, Jeff Trinkle, an expert in advanced robotics, coming on board.
“Jeff was in charge of the National Robotics Initiative at the National Science Foundation so anyone who does robotics research will know him,” says Muñoz-Avila. “Having a researcher like Jeff on our team really puts Lehigh in a strong position.”
Trinkle says he looks forward to leading the department and strengthening Lehigh's robotics research activities, while “fostering interdisciplinary collaborations across campus.”
New Faculty: Computer Science and Engineering
Dominic DiFranzo, Assistant Professor
Previous role: Postdoctoral associate, Social Media Lab, Communication and Information Science, Cornell University
Focus: Human-computer interaction; practical design interventions that encourage social media users to stand up to cyberbullies, fact-check fake news stories, and engage in prosocial actions; new experimental tools/methods that create ecologically valid social media simulations for large-scale experiments
PhD: Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Lifang He, Assistant Professor
Previous role: Postdoctoral research fellow; Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics; University of Pennsylvania
Focus: Machine learning, data mining, tensor analysis, and biomedical informatics; developing advanced computational and statistical methods to analyze multidimensional, graph-structured data, and multi-source data, with applications to medical and social sciences
PhD: Computer Science, South China University of Technology
Corey Montella ’19, Professor of Practice
Previous role: PhD student in Computer Engineering, Lehigh University
Focus: Programming language design and implementation, computational thinking in education, dynamic systems and control, human-computer interaction, autonomous intelligent systems and robotics, and reinforcement learning
PhD: Computer Engineering, Lehigh University
Houria Oudghiri, Professor of Practice
Previous role: Visiting assistant professor, Computer Science, SUNY Polytechnic Institute
Focus: Game development, software engineering, programming, and VLSI design automation tools
PhD: Computer Engineering, McGill University
William Phillips, Professor of Practice
Previous role: Lecturer, Computer Science, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Focus: Software engineering and development, cybersecurity, and robotics; teaching critical thinking through simulated and real-life software projects
PhD: Computer Science, New Jersey Institute of Technology
David Saldaña, Assistant Professor
Previous role: Postdoctoral researcher, Robotics, University of Pennsylvania
Focus: Developing geometric algorithms and control strategies for multi-robot systems with applications in environmental monitoring, disaster response, aerial manipulation, and construction
PhD: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Universidad Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil)
Jeff Trinkle, P.C. Rossin Professor and Chair
Previous role: Professor, Computer Science and Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering; director, CS Robotics Lab; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Focus: Investigating problems that arise when robots try to grasp and manipulate things in unstructured environments; applications in smart homes of the future, with robots helping elderly and infirm people live independently longer; in manufacturing tasks such as assembly, maintenance, and repair; and in environmental cleanup tasks
PhD: Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania
New Faculty: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Wujie Wen, Assistant Professor
Previous role: Assistant professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Florida International University
Focus: Deep learning hardware acceleration and neuromorphic computing; VLSI design/architecture of emerging memory and storage systems; electronic design automation; security of machine learning and its application in embedded, IoT, and edge computing systems
PhD: Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh
New Faculty: Industrial and Systems Engineering
Daniel P. Robinson, Associate Professor
Previous role: Assistant professor, Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Johns Hopkins University
Focus: Mathematical optimization and data science; operations research; designing, analyzing, and implementing algorithms for solving continuous optimization problems in fields such as computer vision and health care
PhD: Mathematics, University of California, San Diego
Xiu Yang, Assistant Professor
Previous role: Scientist; Advanced Computing, Mathematics, and Data Division; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Focus: Uncertainty quantification and stochastic simulation; physics-informed machine learning and data-driven scientific discovery; multi-scale modeling and model order reduction; scientific and engineering computing
PhD: Applied Mathematics, Brown University
New Faculty: Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics
Cristian-Ioan Vasile, Assistant Professor
Previous role: Postdoctoral associate; Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), and Distributed Robotics Laboratory, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Focus: Enabling autonomy in robotic systems; automated synthesis and decision making, explainability, scalability, and learning, with emphasis on deployment on physical robots, leveraging methods from motion planning, formal methods, automata-theory, machine learning, and control engineering
PhDs: Control Engineering, Politechnica University of Bucharest; Systems Engineering, Boston University