The UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science is making an impact in areas such as hypersonic technology, nanomedicine and biomedical engineering, and robotics and autonomous systems – and has hired a new group of faculty who will enhance its reputation in these fields.
Seventeen new faculty members will join four of the six departments for the fall semester. They bring an expertise in areas such as biomedicine, nanomaterials, optoelectronics, semiconductor devices and quantum computing. The addition of this group follows the hiring of more than 30 faculty members during the past academic year, reflecting the college’s goals of providing quality education and producing innovative research.
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is welcoming seven of the 17 new faculty members:
Kimia Zamiri Azar
Assistant Professor
Azar joins UCF as a postdoctoral scholar from the University of Florida. Her research focus is hardware security, particularly system-level and platform-level verification and validation. Her work has garnered funding from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Air Force Research Laboratory. She earned her doctoral degree from George Mason University.
Masoumeh Kalantari-Khandani
Lecturer
Kalantari is a graduate of the computer science doctoral program at UCF and earned her master’s degree at Simon Fraser University in Canada. As a visiting graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, she developed an algorithm for MRI brain image segmentation. Following her doctoral studies, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Society of Engineering Education, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Her teaching interests including signal processing, machine learning and digital systems.
Truong Nghiem
Associate Professor
Nghiem was previously an associate professor at Northern Arizona University, where he established his research lab that focuses on developing the scientific and engineering foundations of cyber-physical systems. These include digital twins, smart building and energy systems, autonomous vehicles and robotics.
He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award and the NSF Engineering Research Initiation Award. He’s a member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He earned his doctoral degree in electrical and systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
Wayesh Qarony
Assistant Professor
Qarony comes to UCF from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he completed a joint postdoctoral fellowship. At UCF, he will also have a joint appointment with the Department of Physics. His research focuses on photonic nanostructures, quantum materials and devices, solid-state quantum technologies and semiconductor nano-optical devices. He has already pioneered several breakthrough technologies including the first all-silicon quantum light source and the first single-mode semiconductor laser that can scale up in size and power. He earned his doctoral degree in applied physics from Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Arthur Weeks
Senior Lecturer
If Weeks’ name is familiar, it’s because he spent 35 years teaching within the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He retired as a professor emeritus in 2022 and earned his tenure as an associate professor. His research ranges from image processing and biomedical systems to low-noise analog electronics and electro-optics. During his time at UCF, he earned more than $3.5 million in funding for his research. Weeks is also a three-time alumnus of UCF, having earned his doctoral, master’s and bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering. As a senior lecturer, Weeks will focus on Senior Design and teach students practical skills that will benefit their projects and their careers.
Tong Wu
Assistant Professor
Wu joins UCF from Cornell University, where he’s served as a postdoctoral scholar since 2021. His research interests include graph signal processing and graph neural networks in power systems. He earned his doctoral degree in information engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He says he was drawn to UCF because of its growing reputation in energy research.
“I was eager to join UCF because of its renowned power and energy research, particularly through initiatives like the RISES faculty cluster,” Wu says. “I am eager to contribute to the research and teaching in intelligent and resilient energy systems using my knowledge in physics-aware AI.”
Qichen Yang
Assistant Professor
Yang brings an expertise in power electronics, insulation technology, high voltage engineering and renewable energy to UCF, where he will oversee the Power Electronics and Insulation Technology Lab. He previously worked as a research faculty member and a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Advanced Power Systems at Florida State University. He earned his doctoral degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2018.
Story by Marisa Ramiccio