College of Engineering Welcomes New Faculty
Hongyue Jin
Hongyue Jin joined the faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering.
After completing her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, she headed to Purdue University to earn her doctoral degree in the same subject.
“With industrial engineering, the beauty is that you can expand to almost all engineering areas, and it encourages collaboration,” she said. “It can be applied to a variety of other disciplines.”
Her research lies at the intersection of industrial engineering and environmental science, with a focus on techno-economic analysis, life cycle assessment and reverse logistic optimization for critical earth elements like lithium and cobalt. She said the stars aligned when she found out the UA SIE department wanted to expand its focus into environmental areas.
Philipp Gutruf
Philipp Gutruf is starting as an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering after completing his postdoctoral training at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences in Karlsruhe, Germany, and his doctorate at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
His research focuses on wireless, battery-free soft devices that integrate with biological systems. One of his specialties is creating devices that go on the skin to monitor parameters like hydration and oxygenation levels.
“They're very conformable, meaning you don’t really realize that the sensors are there, and you can go about your everyday life without being hindered by them,” he said.
He came to UA for its dynamic BME faculty, its proximity to the medical school and the excellent research and collaboration going on all across campus. Not to mention the facilities.
“It’s a very good place to set up a brand-new lab,” he said. “Everything runs very smoothly. It couldn’t be better.”
Dale Hetherington
Dale Hetherington started as a professor of practice in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering after a 25-year career at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The move to Tucson is a return home for Hetherington, who earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering at the University of Arizona in 1989 and 1992, respectively.
“I wanted to be able to give back to the students -- the new and upcoming engineers and scientists,” he said. “I’ve always enjoyed the idea of teaching, and there’s an opportunity to do that at my alma mater, which is great.”
At Sandia National Laboratories, Hetherington worked as a fabrication manager, researching and developing semiconductor devices for different applications. He has also served as a guest lecturer at MIT and IMEC and an adjunct faculty member at the University of New Mexico.
Rawa Adla
Rawa Adla started as an assistant professor of practice in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering after spending 12 years in Michigan. She earned her master’s degree in computer and information sciences at the University of Michigan and her doctorate at the University of Detroit Mercy, where she was also a professor.
After that, she became a researcher for the Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership, a joint project between Ford and General Motors to improve traffic safety by developing crash-avoidance technologies in passenger vehicles.
It was a good fit for Adla, whose research focuses on autonomous driving and connected vehicles, but she wanted to return to academia, and the University of Arizona, with its opportunities for cross-departmental collaboration, offered the perfect opportunity to do it.
“I love research, and at the same time, I like to be in an academic environment and to interact with students every day,” she said.
Mohammed Shafae
After earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in production engineering at the University of Alexandria in Egypt, Shafae earned master’s and doctoral degrees in systems and industrial engineering at Virginia Tech. Now, he’s joining the UA’s Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering as an assistant professor.
His research focuses on developing data analytics methods and improved security measures for smart manufacturing systems, which are becoming increasing integrated via the “internet of things.”
“Manufacturing equipment is becoming more connected to the internet every day, and when you start being more connected, you start opening these doors for bad people with bad intentions,” he said.
Shafae said he applied to jobs at dozens of universities, but the UA was the only university that was strategic about looking for researchers in key, up-and-coming areas like his, cyberphysical security.
“It wasn’t a hassle making the decision about coming where to work,” he said. “The UA made it very simple.”
Adam Printz
Adam Printz joined the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering after earning his master’s and doctoral degrees in nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego, and completing his postdoctoral studies at Stanford University.
He’s bringing his research in solution-processed flexible electronics, and their applications to lightweight solar cells and wearable electronics, to the UA, where he plans to focus on making these products more dependable.
“A lot of people in that field focus on electronic performance, but I’m trying to bring reliability to the forefront,” he said.
He said the UA is a good fit because he was impressed with the people in his department and the opportunities to work with other units on campus.
Boulat Bash
Boulat Bash is joining the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering after working at Raytheon BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for 3 1/2 years. Boulat earned an undergraduate degree in economics at Dartmouth College, and his MS and PhD degrees in computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“I feel that there is a lot more freedom in academia,” he said. “This department in particular has a great balance of both the freedom associated with purely academic pursuits and the entrepreneurship that is needed for my applied work.”
Bash visited the UA last fall to deliver a colloquium at the College of Optical Sciences, and his wife fell in love with Tucson, so he jumped at the chance to apply for a position here. His research is focused on covert communications, which involves not only protecting the content of communications from adversaries, but keeping adversaries from detecting that communication is happening at all.