New faculty join McKelvey School of Engineering

Ten new faculty are set to join the McKelvey School of Engineering, bringing the total number of full-time faculty to more than 140, including 98 tenured and tenure-track faculty.

"With opening of Henry A. and Elvira H. Jubel Hall for Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and with the ongoing construction of James M. McKelvey, Sr. Hall for computing, the McKelvey School of Engineering is primed for significant growth in research and educational offerings," said Aaron F. Bobick, dean and the James M. McKelvey Professor. "The tenured/tenure-track faculty joining us this year – including faculty in computer science and in biomedical and environmental engineering – expands our talent in current areas of excellence and enables our growth in new directions. And the addition to the full-time teaching faculty ensures our ability to provide focused and powerful educational experiences for our students."

Biomedical Engineering

Song Hu, associate professor

• PhD, biomedical engineering, Washington University in St. Louis
• BS and MS, electronic engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing

Hu joins the McKelvey Engineering School from the University of Virginia (UVA), where he has been an assistant professor of biomedical engineering since 2013. Previously, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at WashU with Lihong Wang, former professor of biomedical engineering.

Hu's research focuses on the development of cutting-edge photoacoustic technologies for multi-parametric neurovascular imaging in application to stroke, brain cancer and neuromotor and neurodegenerative diseases. While at UVA, he advanced novel methods and algorithms for label-free imaging of blood perfusion, oxygenation and flow at the microscopic level enabling high-resolution oxygen-metabolic imaging. Hu has further advanced photoacoustic microscopy to improve resolution and acquisition speed with demonstrated value in mechanistic research of many human diseases, including Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular disease. Hu won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2018 and the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award in 2014. He begins Jan. 1, 2020.

Chao Zhou, associate professor

• PhD, physics, University of Pennsylvania
• BS, physics, Peking University, China

Zhou joins the McKelvey Engineering School from Lehigh University, where he is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a founding member of the Department of Bioengineering. He joined Lehigh in 2012 as an assistant professor and served as the P. C. Rossin Assistant Professor from 2015-2017. He completed postdoctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Zhou joins the faculty July 1.

His research interests are in optical coherence tomography, a growing technology used to perform high-resolution cross-sectional imaging using light. He has multiple grants funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other federal and private sources. He holds multiple patents, both in the U.S. and in China for his inventions, and has published dozens of articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as several book chapters. He is associate editor for IEEE Photonics Journal, Journal of Biomedical Optics and Medical Physics.

Katherine Schreiber, lecturer

Schreiber joins McKelvey Engineering as a lecturer from the Department of Biology, where she has been a research scientist since 2017. Previously, she was a visiting assistant professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle. She earned a doctorate in biochemistry from Saint Louis University in 2009 and a bachelor's in biology from the University of Dayton in 2004.

Computer Science & Engineering

Netanel Raviv, assistant professor

• PhD, MSc, computer science, Technion, Haifa, Israel
• BSc, mathematics and computer science, Technion, Haifa, Israel

Raviv joins the McKelvey Engineering School from the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), where he is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Tel-Aviv University in Israel. He is a computer/information scientist and an applied mathematician with interests in real-world applications. Raviv joins the faculty Oct. 1.

His research focuses on applications of coding techniques to computation, privacy and storage. He has published papers in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and in Designs, Codes and Cryptography. In addition, he spent time as a research intern with IBM Research in Haifa, Israel; BingAds, Microsoft, in Bellevue, Wash.

Hila Ben Abraham, lecturer

Ben Abraham joins WashU as a lecturer after earning a doctorate in computer engineering from McKelvey Engineering in August. In addition, she earned a master's in computer science from McKelvey Engineering in 2017 and a bachelor's in computer engineering from Bar Ilan University in Israel. Previously, she worked as a software engineering in Israel for 10 years after serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. She also completed an internship at Cisco in Boston.

Brian Garnett, lecturer

An alumnus of Washington University with a bachelor's in mathematics earned in 2008, Garnett joins the Department of Computer Science & Engineering as a lecturer from Rutgers University, where he has been a teaching instructor since earning a doctorate in mathematics in 2016. He won a departmental teaching award in 2017

Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering

Zhen (Jason) He, professor

• PhD, environmental engineering, Washington University in St. Louis
• MSc, environmental engineering, Technical University of Denmark
• BS, environmental engineering, Tongji University, China

He joins the McKelvey Engineering School from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), where he is a professor in the Charles E. Via, Jr., Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He joined Virginia Tech in 2013 as an associate professor and was named full professor in 2017. Previously, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering & Mechanics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Southern California. He joins the faculty Jan. 2, 2020.

His research centers on environmental biotechnology, bioenergy production, biological wastewater treatment, resource recovery, bioelectrochemical systems, sustainable desalination technology, anaerobic digestion, forward osmosis and membrane bioreactors. He has received numerous awards for his scholarship, including being recognized as a highly cited researcher by Clarivate Analytics in 2018 and the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize in 2018. He is co-editor-in-chief for Environment International, co-editor-in-chief for Journal of Hazardous Materials, and editor-in-chief for the journal Water Environmental Research.

Randall Martin, professor

• PhD and MS, engineering sciences, Harvard University
• MSc, environmental change and management, Oxford University
• BS, electrical engineering, Cornell University

Martin joins EECE from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he has been on the faculty since 2003. He was named professor in 2011. He is the coordinator of the atmospheric science program and director of the Atmosphere Composition Analysis Group. Since 2003, he also has been a research associate at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where he also was a postdoctoral fellow. He serves on a variety of task forces, advisory boards and working groups as an expert on air quality. He joins the faculty July 1.

Martin's research focuses on characterizing atmospheric composition to inform effective policies surrounding major environmental and public health challenges ranging from air quality to climate change. He leads a research group at the interface of satellite remote sensing and global modeling, with applications that include population exposure for health studies, top-down constraints on emissions, and analysis of processes that affect atmospheric composition. Data from his group has been used for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Regional Well-Being Index, for World Health Organization estimates of global mortality due to fine particulate matter, for the Global Burden of Disease Project to examine the risk factors affecting global public health, for the Environmental Performance Index, and for a wide range of health studies.

Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science

Jeffrey Krampf, lecturer

Krampf joins McKelvey Engineering as a lecturer. He expects to earn a doctorate in mechanical engineering from WashU this fall. He has been a graduate teaching assistant since 2015. He also earned a master's in mechanical engineering from WashU in 2017, after earning a bachelor's in mechanical engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology in 2011. Previously, he worked as a project development engineer at Control Technology and Solutions in St. Louis and as a manufacturing process line engineer at Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corp. in Idaho Falls, ID.

Sharniece Holland, lecturer

Holland joins McKelvey Engineering as a lecturer from Auburn University, where she is a postdoctoral fellow in mechanical engineering and an instructor for the Academic Excellence STEM Summer Bridge Program. She earned a doctorate in materials science in 2018 and a master's in mathematics in 2011 from the University of Alabama, and a bachelor's in mathematics from Alabama State University in 2010. Previously, she taught English at the Gwangju International English Village in Gwangju, South Korea, and mathematics at Ranken Technical College in St. Louis.

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