Wayne State welcomes new engineering and computer science faculty members

DETROIT (August 27, 2015) -- The Wayne State University College of Engineering is pleased to announce the addition of seven outstanding scholars to its faculty: Yingxi Elaine Zhu, chemical engineering and materials science; Matthew Nokleby, electrical and computer engineering; Fengwei Zhang, computer science; Zichun Zhong, computer science; Stephen M. Remias, civil and environmental engineering; Saravanan Saran Venkatachalam, industrial and systems engineering; and Jimmy Ching-Ming Chen, engineering technology.

"We are excited to welcome this group of remarkable faculty members to our college," said Wayne State College of Engineering Dean Farshad Fotouhi. "These faculty members will complement our existing research and academic programs in the areas of energy, transportation, security and biomaterials."

Yingxi Elaine Zhu, Professor, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Zhu's research interests are in the areas of polymers and colloids in solutions and under confinement, lipid biomembranes, surface and interfacial science, nanocollodial and supramolecular assembly, membrane separation, and energy materials. She most recently served as an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame. Zhu received her Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2001.

Matthew Nokleby, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Nokleby's research interests include information theory, machine learning, statistical signal processing, wireless networks, and game and decision theory. Nokleby has most recently served as postdoctoral associate for the Information Initiative (iiD) at Duke University. He received his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Rice University in 2012.

Fengwei Zhang, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Zhang's research interests include areas of cyber security with a focus on trustworthy execution, memory introspection, system integrity checking and transparent malware debugging. Zhang most recently served as a research assistant for the Center for Assurance Research & Engineering at George Mason University. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from George Mason University in 2015.

Zichun Zhong, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Zhong's research interests include computer graphics, geometric modeling, medical imaging processing, deformable image restoration, image reconstruction, computer animation, visualization, computer vision, game development, human-computer interaction, GPU algorithms, high-performance computing, mobile computing, data analytics, health informatics and biomedical informatics. He most recently served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Radiation Oncology at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and as a part-time lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas. Zhong received his Ph.D. in computer science from The University of Texas at Dallas in 2014.

Stephen M. Remias, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Remias's research interests are in traffic engineering, intelligent transportation systems, crowdsourced probe vehicle data and using large data sets to solve relevant transportation issues. Remias most recently served as a transportation research engineer for the Joint Transportation Research Program at Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. in civil and infrastructure engineering from Purdue University in 2014.

Saravanan Saran Venkatachalam, Assistant Professor, Industrial and Systems Engineering
Venkatachalam's research interests include supply chain management, logistics and transportation, pricing and revenue management, and air traffic flow management. Venkatachalam most recently served as a research associate and lecturer in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering from Texas A&M University in 2014.

Jimmy Ching-Ming Chen, Assistant Professor, Engineering Technology
Chen's research interests are in silicon lithium-ion battery electrode development, 3D printing applications to fluid mechanics, biomorphism/biomimetics and biomedical engineering, mechatronics, and control systems of hybrid electric vehicles and robotics. Chen recently served as a senior lecturer in the College of Engineering's Division of Engineering Technology. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Texas A&M University in 2006.

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Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution of higher education offering 380 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 28,000 students. For more information about engineering at Wayne State University, visit engineering.wayne.edu.

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