The tenured engineers of 2017

The School of Engineering has announced that 10 members of its faculty have been granted tenure by MIT.

“This year’s newly tenured faculty in the School of Engineering are remarkable,” said Ian A. Waitz, dean of the School of Engineering. “The scale and breadth of their scholarship and the depth of their commitment to teaching demonstrate how strong we are as a community.”

This year’s newly tenured associate professors are:

Polina Anikeeva PhD ’09, the Class of 1942 Career Development Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, does research in bioelectronics, specifically the development of materials and devices that enable recording and manipulation of signaling processes within the nervous system. 

John Hart SM ’02, PhD ’06, the Mitsui Career Development Professor in Contemporary Technology in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, works on carbon nanotubes and graphene, 3-D printing, and other additive manufacturing processes, as well as origami-inspired engineering, to enable new technologies ranging from consumer electronics and medical devices to art objects.

Nuno Loureiro, in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, has research interests that include the instability of magnetic reconnection and the formation of multiple magnetic islands, especially as they relate to the temperatures of plasma in nuclear fusion.

Timothy Lu ’03, SM ’03, PhD ’08, in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, uses principles inspired by electrical engineering and computer science to develop new techniques for constructing, probing, modulating, and modeling synthetically engineered biological circuits.

Bradley Olsen ’03, in the Department of Chemical Engineering, focuses on engineering new biofunctional and bioinspired materials, as well as on understanding the novel polymer physics required to control the nanoscale structure and properties of these complex systems. 

Katharina Ribbeck, in the Department of Biological Engineering, focuses on basic mechanisms by which mucus barriers exclude or allow passage of different molecules and pathogens, and the mechanisms pathogens have evolved to penetrate mucus barriers.

Yuriy Roman, in the Department of Chemical Engineering, works at the interface of heterogeneous catalysis and materials design to apply a wide range of synthetic, spectroscopic, and reaction engineering tools to study the chemical transformation of molecules on catalytic surfaces. 

Noelle Selin, in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (with a joint appointment on the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences) uses atmospheric chemistry modeling to inform decision-making on air pollution, climate change, and hazardous substances such as mercury and persistent organic pollutants.

Jessika Trancik, the Atlantic Richfield Career Development Associate Professor in Energy Studies in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, evaluates the costs, expected changes, and environmental impacts of energy-related technologies to accelerate their improvement by relating performance to design and manufacturing decisions.

Xuanhe Zhao, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, does research that has led to the design of extremely tough adhesive and biocompatible hydrogels and hydrogel-solid hybrids, the discovery of new failure mechanisms in dielectric polymers, and controlled crumpling and unfolding of large-area 2-D materials into functional nanostructures.  

de MIT News http://ift.tt/2pHhrXY