Notre Dame Engineering is a growing community of explorers, innovators, teachers and mentors. This year, we welcomed 21 new members of the faculty. They represent wide-ranging engineering expertise, research interests, and demonstrated enthusiasm for teaching and mentoring students.

“We are excited to welcome this talented new group of scholars and teachers to our faculty,” said Patricia J. Culligan, the Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of Engineering.

“We look forward to all of the ways they will enrich the College, Notre Dame, and the engineering community at large with new ideas, collaborations, and interactions that advance our vision of engineering a better world for all.”  

Learn more about the new members of the engineering faculty hired in 2021 in the following profiles.

Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

Edgar Bolívar-Nieto Assistant Professor Wearable robots, including powered prostheses and rehabilitation exoskeletons.	Emily Johnson Assistant Professor Engineering structures, including computational modeling for renewable energy, aerospace engineering, and health care.
Margaret Coad Assistant Professor Inventive robotic systems to improve human health, safety, and productivity.	Robert Landers Advanced Manufacturing Collegiate Professor Manufacturing processes and electrochemical energy systems.
Meenal Datta Assistant Professor Tumor microenvironment of brain cancers and how tissue mechanics affect disease progression and treatment response.	Matthew Rosenberger Assistant Professor Atomic force microscopy; nanomechanics and strain engineering; materials engineering; chemical and biological sensing; energy-efficient electronics; and energy storage and conversion applications.

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Hanyu Ma Assistant Research Professor Heterogeneous catalytic materials and processes, emphasizing emerging opportunities at the intersection of energy and the environment.	Yong Zhang  Assistant Research Professor Molecular simulation methods for projects related to materials challenges in new and emerging energy storage devices.
Vignesh Sundaresan Assistant Research Professor Electrochemical and optical techniques to observe nanoparticles, molecules, enzymes, and bacteria in order to develop ultra-sensitive chemical and bio-sensors.

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences

Patrick Brewick Assistant Professor Data analytics, modeling, and mechanics for applications in monitoring of civil infrastructure and marine structures.

Luis Fargier-Gabaldón Massman Beavers Associate Professor of the Practice of Heavy Civil Engineering Design and construction of dams, infrastructure financing, earthquake engineering, and retrofitting of structures.

Computer Science and Engineering

Diego Gómez-Zará Assistant Professor Human collaboration across online platforms and systems and network science to leverage user decisions.	Yanfang (Fanny) Ye Collegiate Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Artificial intelligence to detect new malicious software and health intelligence to combat the opioid epidemic and COVID-19 crisis.
Toby Jia-Jun Li Assistant Professor Design of systems for human-artificial intelligence collaborations.	Xiangliang Zhang Associate Professor Machine learning and data mining with an emphasis on recommender systems, network science, and mitigation of attacks on recommender systems.
Joanna Cecilia da Silva Santos Assistant Professor Novel automated techniques to develop secure software systems.

Electrical Engineering

Ningyuan Cao Assistant Professor Custom analog/mixed-signal circuit, digital architecture, and micro-system design for machine learning acceleration and distributed intelligence.	Monisha Ghosh Professor Wireless technologies for the 5G cellular, next-generation Wi-Fi systems, IoT, coexistence, and spectrum sharing.
Sourav Dutta Assistant Research Professor Emerging device architecture to enable brain-inspired computing.	Yasemin Ozkan-Aydin Assistant Professor Robotic systems that can move across unpredictable, complex terrains as skillfully as biological organisms.

Office of the Dean of Engineering

Also this year, the College welcomed Daryl Peterson, managing director of the Engineering Innovation Hub.

— Originally published by the College of Engineering on September 9, 2021.