A
distinguished group of academics, ranging from honored and experienced senior
faculty to bright young professors have joined, or agreed to join the faculty
of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering bringing a fresh surge of energy and
excellence.
“Our
faculty is steadily growing stronger and more diverse,” said Dean Yannis
Yortsos as he announced the recent series of faculty appointments. “The quality
is uniformly impressive, and their far-ranging intellectual interests impact a
number of important initiatives, including our recent initiative in
nanotechnology. I am particularly pleased that we have been able to increase
diversity and balance across departments. Two of our appointments are jointly
with Chemistry in the USC
College, demonstrating
our commitment to interdisciplinary research.”
Karen Liu, who earned her Ph.D. from the University
of Washington earlier this year, will
join the Viterbi School’s Department of Computer Science
as an assistant professor starting in January 2006. Liu completed her
undergraduate studies at the National
Taiwan University
with a bachelor's degree in computer science and information engineering.
Her research involves the use of physical and biomechanical principles to
develop algorithms that streamline and improve the process of creating
realistic character animations for advanced interactive computing and gaming.
Karen’s appointment will strengthen interactive computing and games, which are
areas of importance for the department and the school.
Three
appointments were made in the Department of Electrical Engineering -- Giuseppe
Caire, Daniel Lidar and Stephen Cronin. Caire and Lidar will be in the systems side of electrical engineering while
Cronin will be in electrophysics. Cronin was hired in the context of the nanotechnology
initiative.
Giuseppe Caire, who joins as a professor of electrical
engineering - systems, comes to USC from the Eurecom Institute, Sophia-Antipolis, France. He previously served on the
faculties of the University of Parma and the Politecnico di Torino in Italy, where he
also earned his doctoral degree. Professor Caire has also held research
appointments at the European Space Agency, Princeton
University and the University of Sydney
(Australia).
Caire has
done prominent work in communications theory, information theory and coding
theory with particular focus on wireless applications. He was awarded the Jack
Neubauer Best System Paper Award from the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society in
2003, and the Joint Information Theory/Communications Society Best Paper Award
in 2004. Caire was elected to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information
Theory Society in 2004. He brings considerable strength and outstanding
prominence in the area of communications.
Daniel Lidar, whose
primary appointment is in the USC
College’s Chemistry
department, received his Ph.D. in physics from the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, where he worked on scattering theory and disorder. He was awarded
Fulbright and Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellowships to pursue research in quantum
computation at UC-Berkeley, where he worked till 2000. He then joined the University of Toronto as assistant professor of
theoretical chemistry and directed and co-founded the Center for Quantum
Information and Quantum Control. He was promoted to associate professor in 2004
and has held cross-appointments in physics and mathematics. Lidar’s research
focuses on the problem of controlling open quantum systems, with a particular
emphasis on quantum computers. Lidar was awarded a Sloan Foundation Fellowship
and was named one of the Top 20 Researchers Under 40 by the Canadian Institute
for Advanced Research.
Stephen Cronin earned his PhD in physics at MIT in 2002, after working in
Professor Mildred Dresselhaus' research group measuring the transport properties
of nanowires and quantum well structures. He subsequently conducted
post-doctoral research measuring single molecule optical spectroscopy and
electron transport of individual carbon nanotubes at Harvard University
with Professor Michael Tinkham. Focusing mainly on optical spectroscopy
and electron transport at the nanometer scale, Cronin's research spans topics
from biosensors to single molecule MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems)
devices from nanowires and carbon nanotubes. His main objective is to study the
exceptional properties of carbon nanotubes using novel optical techniques, and
to identify and evaluate potential applications that exploit their unique
properties. Stephen is our first appointment in the context of the
nanotechnology initiative launched last year.
Eva Kanso and Tait Pottebaum have joined the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as assistant professors.
Eva Kanso, who earned her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Berkeley in 2003, comes
to USC from the Control and Dynamical Systems Group at Caltech. She has done
novel work in developing reduced mathematical and numerical models that capture
the fundamental principles of aquatic locomotion. Her work has important
implications for the development of biologically inspired underwater vehicles
that use shape changes for locomotion and dynamics control.
Tait Pottebaum has joined the same department at the Viterbi School
-- Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering -- from which he received his
undergraduate degree in 1998. Since then, he has completed his graduate
studies at Caltech through a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate
Fellowship, earning his Ph.D. in aeronautics in 2003. His research focuses on
the relationship between wake structure and heat transfer for a heated,
oscillating cylinder in cross-flow. His interests include micro-scale
convective heat transfer, bluff-body aerodynamics, buoyancy driven flows, fluid-structure
interactions, and non-invasive temperature and velocity measurement techniques.
Richard Roberts, associate professor, and Atul Konkar, assistant
professor, have joined the newly merged Department of Chemical
Engineering and Materials Science.
Richard Roberts
will join the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
as an associate professor. He also will receive a joint appointment in
Chemistry at the College. Roberts originally received a Ph.D. in
chemistry from Yale University in 1993 and later worked as a
postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General
Hospital with Professor Jack Szostak. In 1997, he co-founded a
biotechnology company (Phylos Inc.) and joined the faculty at Caltech
as an assistant professor of chemistry. His research uses mRNA
display, a patented technique he invented, for the purpose of peptide,
protein, and peptide-mimetic design. His awards include the
Beckman Young Investigator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award
in Science and Engineering (PECASE), and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Fellowship.
Atul Konkar
was appointed as assistant professor in the Department of Chemical
Engineering and Materials Science. He is our other appointment in the
nanotechnology initiative. He received his undergraduate education at
IT-BHU, India in metallurgical engineering, and his M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in Materials Science from USC. He has been a research assistant
professor at the USC Nanostructure Materials and Devices Laboratory.
Prior to that, Konkar worked in industrial R&D at Motorola and
Agere Systems. His primary research interests are in nanoscale
structural/chemical/electrical studies of hybrid inorganic/organic
structures and synthesis of nanostructures for device applications.
