MIE welcomes new faculty members

As student enrollment continues to grow at UIC, so does the faculty in mechanical and industrial engineering (MIE). The department has grown significantly and to keep pace with the increase, five new faculty members are joining the team for the fall semester and a sixth member will start in January. This brings the total number of faculty to 43.

“We are very excited about these five new colleagues joining our department,” said Farzad Mashayek, professor and department head for Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. “The department is continuously growing and they will add depth to research and teaching.”

The new mechanical and industrial engineering faculty members are:

Dr. Hadis Anahideh is joining the industrial engineering faculty as a research assistant professor. She earned a PhD in industrial engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington and holds a master’s degree in industrial engineering and a bachelor’s degree in applied math. Prior to joining the faculty at UIC, Anahideh worked in the Operations Research and Advanced Analytics Department at American Airlines as a research scientist being involved in different optimization and machine learning projects. Her research interests span in black-box optimization, mathematical modeling, data analytics, and applied machine learning including learning with limited labeled data. Anahideh is teaching a course on Data Science in the fall semester.

Dr. Heejin Jeong joins the industrial engineering faculty as an assistant professor. He earned his PhD and master’s degree in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan. His research aim is to design, implement and evaluate future interactive systems from the human factors perspective. He explores human performance and behavior to understand human interactions with autonomous and intelligent systems. He seeks to apply multiple engineering methodologies to addressing societal problems in human-system engineering domains including transportation, robotics, healthcare, and modern technologies. His ultimate research goal is to advance the well-being and the quality of life of the physically and mentally vulnerable populations as well as the general population. Jeong is teaching a course on Applied Human Factors Research in the fall semester.

Dr. Pranav Bhounsule joins the mechanical engineering (ME) faculty as an assistant professor and the director of the Robotics and Motion Laboratory. His research interests include legged locomotion, robotics, and optimal control. He also focuses on developing robotic prototypes and practical control algorithms that push the state-of-the-art of current systems. He uses prototyping tools such as 3D printers and simulations and tools in system identification, optimization, feedback control, and learning. He received a PhD in mechanical engineering from Cornell University and a master’s degree in applied mechanics from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He is teaching a course on Introduction to Engineering Design and Graphics in the fall semester.

Dr. Subramanian Sankaranarayanan will join the ME faculty as an associate professor with a joint appointment with Argonne National Laboratory. He is a nanoscience scientist at the Center for Nanoscale Materials in the Nanoscience and Technology Division at Argonne and his research interests are in the areas of machine learning to bridge the electronic, atomistic, and mesoscopic scales; integration of atomistic (and continuum) simulations with ultrafast X-ray imaging, inverse design for materials discovery and machine learning to predict metastable phase diagrams for applications in tribology, corrosion, neuromorphic computing, energy storage, and thermal management. He has a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of South Florida and a master’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Science. He will begin teaching in the spring semester.  

Dr. Matthew Alonso joins the MIE faculty as a visiting clinical assistant professor and the visiting director of Engineering Learning Center and Student Success. His research interests are solar thermal energy storage, food drying, biological, multi-material, and micro additive manufacturing system. His participation in the NSF Innovation Corps program and several business competitions helped shape his teaching style around entrepreneurship and idea generation. He co-founded Sun Buckets, an organization dedicated to solving the global cooking problem by developing a portable solar thermal energy storage system without fuel, fire or emissions. He completed a PhD in agricultural engineering and a master’s in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is teaching a course on Interdisciplinary Product Development in the fall semester.

Dr. Jida Huang is slated to join the industrial engineering faculty as an assistant professor in January. His research interests include computational design and fabrication, shape modeling and geometry processing, engineering optimization, and manufacturing data analytics. He is slated to complete his PhD in industrial and systems engineering from the University at Buffalo this year. He earned his master’s degree in industrial engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China. He will start teaching in the spring semester.

Learn more about MIE’s faculty at https://mie.uic.edu/faculty-and-staff/faculty.