As the technology industry grows each year, so does the need for experts who create innovations that fuel this sector and educate the workforce that powers it. With this demand in mind, UCF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science (CECS) has broken a hiring record with a total of 39 new faculty members joining the college’s seven departments in Fall 2025. This marks the third consecutive academic year that CECS has appointed more than 30 new faculty members, although it’s the first time this many have started in one semester.

The new professors, instructors and lecturers bring a wide range of expertise to the college, ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity to hypersonics and semiconductors. Michael Georgiopoulos, dean of CECS, says the new faculty’s breadth of knowledge aligns with the university’s strategic plan and enhances its reputation.

“The College of Engineering and Computer Science has hired several faculty members in the areas of AI, energy, digital twins and hypersonics, among others,” Georgiopoulos says. “It has expanded the college’s research and educational expertise in areas that are of national importance and are in line with UCF’s vision of being Florida’s Premier Engineering and Technology University.”

For the Fall 2025 semester, 19 of the CECS new hires are under the Department of Computer Science, which is growing its student population, and supporting the university’s AI hiring initiative and the newly formed UCF Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IAI), which is led by Professor Mubarak Shah. This hiring effort marks a record for the department, and includes seven lecturers and 12 tenured and tenure-track faculty members.

“This reflects both the growing research potential of the department as well as our commitment to support our growing student population,” says Damla Turgut, Department of Computer Science chair. “The research faculty bring expertise across key areas of computer science such as AI — six of the new faculty were hired as part of the UCF Institute of Artificial Intelligence — digital twin technologies, bioinformatics and software engineering.”

A total of eight new faculty are UCF alums, with three who graduated this past summer. Ali Gordon, the dean of graduate affairs, attributes this to the quality of the college’s graduates.

“In recent hiring cycles, applications for faculty positions here in CECS have been very high,” Gordon says. “Landing a professor or lecturer role here is more challenging every year. The success that our alumni have exhibited in attaining positions here speaks to the excellence of our college and its programs.”

The college is expected to bring aboard five additional faculty members in the spring semester, bringing the total number of new hires for the academic year to 44. View the full list of fall faculty hires below.

Materials Science and Engineering

Mohiuddin Quadir, associate professor

Quadir joins UCF from North Dakota State University, where he developed a nationally recognized research program on stimuli-responsive biomaterials. His research has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. He earned his doctoral degree in organic polymer chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At UCF, Quadir will be a member of the Biionix Faculty Research Cluster and plans to advance the development of living nano-biomaterials designed to register multiple genetic and epigenetic signals in a logic-gated pattern. These materials will serve as the foundation for next-generation cellular implants and drug delivery systems capable of controlling cell fate through epigenetic modulations.

Viktoryia Shautsova, assistant professor

Shautsova hails from Stanford University, where she has been developing nanoscale materials for neural engineering and advanced optical sensing as a Stanford Science Fellow. During her postdoctoral appointment at the University of Oxford, Shautsova investigated large-scale Van der Waals heterostructures for optoelectronic devices. She earned her doctoral degree in physics from Imperial College in London. At UCF, Shautsova aims to continue her investigation of emergent properties in nanoscale systems for electronic, photonic and biointerface applications.

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Edward Clutter ’20MBA, instructor
Clutter brings more than 20 years of industry experience from organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Siemens Energy and GE Energy. He earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Mississippi State in 1997 and a master’s degree in business administration from UCF in 2020. He is currently working toward a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from UCF. His work focuses on the application of computational fluid dynamics.

Phillip Hargrove, instructor
Hargrove spent the first eight years of his professional career at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, serving as a launch vehicle trajectory analyst and a mission integration engineer with NASA’s Launch Services Program as well as leading K-12 and collegiate student engagement programs. He has extensive experience developing interface requirements for a wide variety of spacecraft from small CubeSats to large space-based observatories as well as validating launch service provider compliance with those requirements. Hargrove previously served as an adjunct faculty member for the Florida Institute of Technology Spaceport Education Center, where he has taught online courses in astrodynamics and orbital mechanics.

Aaron Hoskins, associate lecturer
Hoskins joins UCF as a tenured professor from California State University, Fresno. Prior to that, he worked at the Naval Research Laboratory at the Naval Center for Space Technology. He earned his doctoral degree in industrial engineering from Mississippi State University and his master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland. His research focuses include space situational awareness and satellite data analysis.

Rhett Jeffries, senior lecturer
Jefferies joins UCF from the Penn State Applied Research Laboratory, where he served as a research associate professor and led the fluid research department. He brings years of experience from government organizations such as the Federal Aviation Administration Office of Environment and Energy and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Shin Young Jeong, assistant professor
Jeong joins UCF from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, where he has served as a postdoctoral scholar since 2023. Prior to that, he earned his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Jeong’s research focuses on the development of commercial scale, particle-based concentrating solar thermal power and thermal energy storage. He has been published in various notable journals, including Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, and Renewable Energy, and is very involved with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. At UCF, he leads the Bulk Solids Energy Lab and is a member of the Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research (CATER).

Sung Min Jo, assistant professor
Prior to UCF, Jo worked as an assistant professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea. He earned his doctoral degree from KAIST and later conducted research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He specializes in computational hypersonics and plasma physics and educations. At UCF, he leads the Hypersonics and Plasma Research Group, focusing on uncertainty-aware plasma reaction dynamics, multi-physics coupled numerical methods and space situational awareness.

Hao “Will” Li, lecturer
Li joins UCF from MIT, where he served as a lecturer for the university’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. His teaching interests include numerical computation, mechanics of materials, and measurement and instrumentation. His research interests include engineering education and problem solving. A common theme in his work is simple but descriptive, mathematical models to analyze human-centered problems. He earned his doctoral and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT.

Patrick Meagher, assistant professor
Meagher’s research focuses on the deployment of extreme-scale computational fluid dynamics and molecular dynamics simulations to reveal unique physics occurring in the supersonic or hypersonic reacting flows at the micro- and nanoscale, and to couple these phenomena to the performance of high-speed propulsion systems and vehicles. Meagher earned his doctoral degree and bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut. In 2022, he was awarded the Zeldovich Fellowship by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for excellence in detonation research. Meagher was also appointed as a visiting student researcher in the NanoEnergy Lab at Stanford University, and served as a student researcher with Google Research.

Darshan Yadav, lecturer
Prior to joining UCF, Yadav taught classes on computer-aided design and engineering, the mechanics of materials and structural dynamics at the Florida Institute of Technology. He earned his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from FIT in 2023. His doctoral research focused on improving the mechanical characteristics of additively manufactured parts using ultrafast lasers for surface modifications.

Modeling, Simulation and Training

Grace Fox, assistant professor
Fox’s research focuses on understanding the evolving role of privacy across numerous emerging technological contexts from individual, organizational and societal perspectives. Her work has been published in well-regarded journals and conferences in various academic disciplines. She is collaborating on various multidisciplinary projects leveraging various methodologies with colleagues in business, engineering and health care informatics. In addition to joining the School of Modeling, Simulation and Training, Fox is also a member of the Cyber Security and Privacy faculty cluster initiative at UCF. She has previously held assistant professor positions at Dublin City University in Ireland, and postdoctoral positions at Dublin City University, University College Cork and UCF.

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Saikat Dey, assistant professor
Dey’s research focuses on the design, modeling and optimization of power electronic converters and the use of semiconductors in efficient power conversion solutions. He earned his doctoral degree from Arizona State University and previously worked as a power electronic design engineer for Tagore Technology, which is currently part of GlobalFoundries.

Sreeram Sundaresh ’18MS ’23PhD, lecturer
Sundaresh returns to his alma mater this fall, having earned his master’s degree and doctoral degree in electrical engineering from UCF. He previously worked at Intel Corporation, focusing on the development of etch stop materials. His expertise lies in semiconductor processing, thin film deposition and material characterization with proficiency in techniques such as photolithography, radio frequency sputtering, plasma deposition and electrical transport measurements. Throughout his academic and professional career, he has contributed extensively to research in semiconductor materials, publishing more than 14 peer-reviewed papers in esteemed journals such as the ECS Journal of Solid-State Science and Technology and Coatings.

Christopher Iannello, professor of practice
Prior to joining UCF, Iannello served as NASA’s longest-tenured Technical Fellow for electrical/power, acting as the agency’s senior-most authority on spacecraft and launch vehicle electrical systems. Iannello has been intimately involved in the design, integration, test and flight operations of nearly every major spacecraft and launch system in the U.S. civil and commercial space sectors. His unique insight spans the full landscape of design, manufacturing and test philosophies — from conventional NASA methodologies to the most current commercial approaches. At UCF, Iannello will collaborate with other faculty to develop the best space electrical curriculum in the nation, develop critical space sector service and test capabilities at UCF, foster new collaborations to advance space exploration and student education, and work with the power electronics research faculty in the department.

Industrial Engineering and Management Systems

Minas Pantelidakis, assistant professor
Pantelidakis joins UCF from Auburn University, where he earned a doctoral degree and a master’s degree in industrial and systems engineering. His academic accomplishments have been recognized with the JT Black Lean Engineering Student of the Year award and the Walt and Virginia Woltosz Fellowship. His research focuses on digital twins, advanced manufacturing, modeling and simulation, artificial intelligence, extended reality and the Internet of Things.

Jorge Sarmiento ’16 ’18MS ’24PhD, lecturer
Not only is Sarmiento a three-time industrial engineering alumnus, but he has served as an adjunct professor for the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems since January. This fall, he returns to the department as a lecturer, committed to advancing engineering education and mentoring the next generation of professionals. He is Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certified, which validates his problem-solving skills with an emphasis on the industry’s Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control (DMAIC) model. His research focuses on agile systems, discrete event simulation, queuing systems, quality engineering and continuous improvement, particularly for the healthcare and service industries. Sarmiento has been published in Applied Sciences, is a member of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers’ Miami chapter, and is a 2024 recipient of the UCF Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching Award.

Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering

Stergios Emmanouil, assistant professor
Emmanouil joins UCF from the University of Connecticut, where he served as an assistant research professor, leading efforts on climate-informed risk assessment and grid resilience. His research involves close collaboration with stakeholders across government agencies, the industry and local communities to inform the development of adaptive strategies for critical infrastructure resilience. He earned his doctoral degree in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Connecticut and a master’s degree in hydraulic engineering from the Delft University of Technology. He is a licensed professional civil engineer in Greece and has been a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece since 2017.

Ivan Haigh, professor and director of the National Center for Integrated Coastal Research
Haigh is a prominent coastal and physical oceanographer. Born in Zambia, he moved to the U.K. at 19, earning his bachelor’s degree in oceanography and mathematics and a doctoral degree from the University of Southampton. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship in Western Australia, he returned to Southampton as a lecturer and eventually became a professor of sea level and coastal impacts. In 2022, he became the director of the UK’s Center for Doctoral Training for Resilient Flood Futures. Prior to academia, he also worked as a numerical modelling consultant with Associated British Ports Marine Environment Research.

Xishun Liao, assistant professor
Liao hails from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he worked in the UCLA Mobility Lab, conducting research related to artificial intelligence and mobility digital twins. He earned a doctoral degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Riverside, and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park. His research focus is the development of AI-powered digital twins through interdisciplinary approaches that integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning with data science, control theory and optimization. His goal is to create human-centered, intelligent mobility systems that are safe, efficient, equitable and sustainable.

Computer Science

Ali Al Kinoon ’25PhD, lecturer
Kinoon returns to UCF after earning a doctoral degree in computer science this past summer. Al Kinoon’s focus is Android security and privacy, particularly in the context of mobile app permissions, policy transparency and malware detection. Al Kinoon’s work integrates natural language processing and machine learning to enhance user awareness and strengthen app ecosystem security. Al Kinoon has contributed to several research projects, including the development of large-scale Android datasets and frameworks for analyzing privacy policies.

Gerd Bruder, associate professor
Bruder brings an expertise in extended reality, including augmented reality and virtual reality, to UCF. He earned his doctoral degree in computer science from the University of Munster in Germany and has completed several research experiences at European academic institutions. His research focuses on human factors, human-computer interaction, modeling and simulation, and digital twins for healthcare, military, architecture and visualization purposes.

Yu Fu, assistant professor
At UCF, Fu will lead the Designing Interactive and Intelligent Data Lab. His research spans data visualization and human-computer interaction, with a focus on improving how people analyze, communicate and consume data. He designs and develops interactive systems, visualization techniques, and authoring tools that support data storytelling and foster critical thinking in data-rich environments. His work combines empirical studies, visual and interaction design, and system building to understand how people engage with data in real-world settings and to inform the development of more effective tools and representations. He is also interested in applying his research in domains such as sports analytics, journalism and digital twin systems. He earned his doctoral degree in human-centered computing from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Shahram Jahani, lecturer
Jahani brings a research background in high-performance computing, cryptography and number theory-based public-key systems to UCF. His work focuses on the design and optimization of mathematical frameworks to enhance the efficiency and security of cryptographic algorithms. He is also the originator of the ZOT-Binary and ZOT-MK number systems, developed to improve big-integer multiplication and cryptographic operations. He earned his doctoral and master’s degrees in computer science from the Universiti Sains Malaysia, with research centered on computational mathematics and security. Prior to his academic work, Jahani spent over a decade in the industrial sector.

Jie Lin ’25PhD, lecturer
Prior to joining UCF, Jie Lin held roles as a full-stack software developer and manager, overseeing various business operations ranging from small merchandise trading to real estate investments. He earned his doctoral degree in computer science from UCF, his master’s degree in computer science from Emory University and his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Ursinus College. His research focuses on security, privacy, vulnerability analysis, and applications of large language models and deep learning. Lin is passionate about creating collaborative, engaging educational environments that emphasize critical thinking and practical problem-solving skills to equip students for success in computer science and cybersecurity fields.

Wu Lin, assistant professor
Lin joins UCF as a member of IAI. His research bridges computer science, statistics and mathematics to develop novel, implementable algorithms for numerical optimization and probabilistic inference, as well as to advance the theoretical foundations of AI. He earned his doctoral degree in computer science from the University of British Columbia, in 2023. Prior to joining UCF, he was a distinguished postdoctoral fellow at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Canada and worked as a technical staff member at the RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project in Japan.

Kirill Medvedev, assistant professor
Growing up in Siberia’s Akademgorodok, which literally translates to “Academic Town,” it’s no surprise that Medvedev pursued a career in academia. The scientific environment sparked his curiosity in biology and led him to pursue a master’s degree in bioinformatics at Novosibirsk State University and a doctoral degree in mathematical biology and bioinformatics from the Institute of Cytology and Genetics. He then joined the lab of Professor Nick Grishin at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where he served as a postdoctoral scholar. His research interests include computational biology, bioinformatics, structural biology, drug delivery and digital pathology.

Kevin Pfeil ’10 ’13MS ’21PhD, lecturer
A three-time alum, Pfeil joins UCF from the University of North Florida, where he worked as an assistant professor. He previously worked as a web developer for a municipal government and as an applications developer for an aerospace company. As he returns to his alma mater, Pfeil aims to provide a world-class education to his students. He earned a bachelor’s in information technology, and a master’s and doctoral degree in computer science from UCF.

Corey Pittman ’21PhD, lecturer
Pittman joins UCF from the University of North Florida, where he served as an assistant professor. Pittman’s professional experience includes contributing to camera backend systems at Snap Inc. and working on intelligent tutoring systems and image-based tools at Soar Technology Inc. He also gained research experience at Microsoft Research, focusing on streamlining control schemes for consumer drones. He earned his doctoral degree in computer science from UCF. His research focuses on human-computer interaction, specifically the areas of augmented reality, novel input techniques and pattern recognition.

Md Mahfuzur Rahaman ’22MS ’25PhD, lecturer
Rahaman also returned to UCF after earning a doctoral degree and a master’s degree in computer science. He previously served as a faculty member at the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology in Bangladesh and worked as a software engineer for Nilavo Technologies Limited. He’s also served as a trainer for the International Collegiate Programming Contest. His research interests include computational biology and bioinformatics.

Yuzhang Shang, assistant professor
Shang joins UCF with a doctoral degree in computer science from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He was awarded the MLCommons Rising Star Award earlier this year and has interned at Google DeepMind and Cisco Research. His research focuses on efficient and scalable AI, machine learning and computer vision. He was hired as a member of the IAI.

Ali Siahkoohi, assistant professor
Siahkoohi hails from Rice University, where he previously worked as a Simons Postdoctoral Fellows. He received his doctoral degree in computational science and engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2022. His research focuses on designing scalable methods for quantifying uncertainty in artificial intelligence models, with a broader goal of enhancing AI reliability.

Shashank Sonkar, assistant professor
Sonkar joins UCF as a member of the IAI. His research focuses on understanding and advancing the reasoning capabilities of large language models, as well as the computational modeling of human learning and cognition. This work underpins the development of next-generation personalization technologies across multiple fields, with education as a primary domain of impact.

Yu Tian, assistant professor
Tian joins the Department of Computer Science with a joint appointment in the Department of Clinical Sciences in the College of Medicine. He was hired as a member of the IAI will manage the AI and Imaging Medicine Lab. Tian’s expertise is in computer vision and machine learning and their applications in the biomedical domain. He previously worked as a postdoctoral scholar at both Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to that, her earned his doctoral degree and his undergraduate degree in computer science from the Australian Institute for Machine Learning in Adelaide, Australia.

Rohith Venkatakrishnan, assistant professor
Venkatakrishnan studies people’s experiences of using immersive virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies. He broadly aims to understand and enhance aspects related to the user experience of these technologies, exploring how to deploy them in effective, impactful and ethical ways. His research spans a wide range of extended reality topics, including perception and cognition, cybersickness, inputs and interactions, self-avatars, artificially intelligent agents, social applications and tangible integration.

Roshan Venkatakrishnan, assistant professor
Rohith’s twin brother Roshan focuses on human-centered extended reality technologies spanning virtual, augmented and mixed reality. His research explores how people perceive, interact and behave in these immersive mediums, with interests in avatars, artificially intelligent virtual humans and agents, cybersickness, inputs, 3D user interfaces and embodied interaction. Through interdisciplinary collaborations, he designs extended reality systems that make virtual experiences more meaningful, intuitive and impactful.

Song Wang, assistant professor
Song Wang joins UCF from the University of Virginia, where he earned his doctoral degree. His research focuses on the generalization and robustness of machine learning algorithms in novel scenarios, including generalization to new tasks, shifted data distributions and unseen classes. He also explores interdisciplinary applications of his work in scientific domains such as bioinformatics and neuroscience. He is also a member of the IAI.

Zhenyi Wang, assistant professor
Wang earned his doctoral degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research focus is trustworthy AI, continual learning and data-efficient learning. At UCF, he manages the Adaptive, Efficient and Trustworthy AI Lab is a member of the IAI.

Aashish Yadavally, assistant professor
Yadavally’s research lies at the intersection of AI and software engineering, with a focus on optimizing software development processes for enhancing software security. He earned his doctoral degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Dallas and a master’s degree in AI from the University of Georgia. At UCF, he leads the Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence Research Lab. His long-term vision is to establish and advance scalable, AI-assisted development workflows that support secure and reliable software engineering.