Faculty

Allen E. Puckett Professor of Electrical Engineering

Professor Perona's research focusses on vision: how do we see and how can we build machines that see.

Professor Perona is currently interested visual recognition, more specifically visual categorization. He is studying how machines can learn to recognize frogs, cars, faces and trees with minimal human supervision, and how machines can learn from human experts. His project `Visipedia' has produced two smart device apps (iNaturalist and Merlin Bird ID) that anyone can use to recognize the species of plants and animals from a photograph.

In collaboration with Professors Anderson and Dickinson, professor Perona is building vision systems and statistical techniques for measuring actions and activities in fruit flies and mice. This enables geneticists and neuroethologists to investigate the relationship between genes, brains and behavior.

Professor Perona is also interested in studying how humans perform visual tasks, such as searching and recognizing image content. One of his recent projects studies how to harness the visual ability of thousands of people on the web.

Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics, Biology, and Physics

Professor Phillips focuses on physical biology of the cell: biophysical theory, single-molecule experiments, and single-cell experiments.

Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Bioengineering

Engineering small conditional DNAs and RNAs for signal transduction in vitro, in situ, and in vivo; computational algorithms for the analysis and design of nucleic acid systems; programmable molecular instruments for readout and regulation of cell state.

Robert H. Goddard Professor of Aeronautics

Professor Pullin focuses on computational and theoretical fluid mechanics, vortex dynamics, compressible flow and shock dynamics, turbulence, and large-eddy simulation of turbulent flows.

Space-Related Research

Fluid dynamics at the mean-free path scale; statistical models of gas-surface interaction, rarefied gas dynamics.

John E. Goode, Jr., Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering; Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science

Professor Ravichandran focuses on deformation and failure of materials, micro/nano mechanics, wave propagation, composites, active materials, biomaterials and cell mechanics, and experimental mechanics.

Mechanics of light-weight materials; active materials with large strain actuation; space structures.

Theodore von Karman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering

Professor Rosakis focuses on solid mechanics, dynamic mechanical properties, ballistic impact, hypervelocity impact of micrometeorites on spacecraft, dynamic fracture and fragmentation, adiabatic shear banding, earthquake fault mechanics, mechanics of metallic glasses, restoration of ancient stone monuments, and mechanics of thin films.

Space-Related Research

Reliability of space materials and structures, spacecraft shielding against micrometeoroid impact; the mechanics of sample return (avoiding inter-planetary and planetary contamination); microelectronics and MEMS in space; optical properties of space telescope mirrors.

Frank J. Roshek Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Bioengineering

Professor Roukes's research focuses on nanobiotechnology, nanotechnology, nanoscale physics, nanoscale and molecular mechanics.

Bernard Neches Professor of Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics and Physics

Professor Scherer's group focuses on the application of microfabrication to integrated microsystems. Recently, his group has specialized on developing sensors and diagnostic tools that can be used for low-cost point-of-care disease detection as well as precision health monitoring.

Professor Scherer has pioneered microcavity lasers and filters, and now his group works on integration of microfluidic chips with electronic, photonic and magnetic sensors. His group has also developed silicon nanophotonics and surface plasmon enhanced light emitting diodes, and has perfected the fabrication and characterization of ultra-small structures by lithography and electron microscopy.

Presently, his group works on integration of microfluidic chips with electronic, photonic and magnetic sensors. His group has also developed silicon nanophotonics and surface plasmon enhanced light emitting diodes, and has perfected the fabrication and characterization of ultra-small structures by lithography and electron microscopy.

Theodore Y. Wu Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering; Jet Propulsion Laboratory Senior Research Scientist

Professor Schneider's research focuses on the climate dynamics of Earth and other planets. Its goal is to develop theories of climate and in particular of the atmospheric macroturbulence that largely controls it. Such theories help us understand the climate changes that occurred over Earth's history and that are likely to occur in the future. They also help us understand the circulations of other planets, for example, how jets on the giant planets form.

Shaler Arthur Hanisch Professor of Computer Science and Applied and Computational Mathematics

Professor Schröder is interested in the design of efficient and reliable algorithms for problems in computer graphics. These range from geometric modeling (effective methods to model the shape of objects) to animation (simulation of physical phenomena such as the deformation of cloth). His emphasis is on an area known as "Discrete Differential Geometry." Its goals are to rebuild the foundations of classical differential geometry in a discrete setting which makes it immediately useful for computation.

Professor of Computer Science

Algorithms and Communication Protocols; Combinatorics and Probability; Coding and Information Theory; Quantum Computation.

Professor of Applied Physics

Professor Schwab's current focus is on the question of quantum physics at large length scales, what does it take to observe quantum phenomena with ordinary matter and the largest possible scale. The techniques used to probe this are quantum-limited measurements of motion, ultra-low temperature physics, nanotechnology and microfabrication techniques, and ultra-sensitivity microwave measurement. 

Louis E. Nohl Professor of Chemical Engineering

Professor Seinfeld focuses on atmospheric chemistry, secondary organic aerosol formation, and aerosol-cloud relationships in climate. His research group addresses these areas through laboratory chamber and flow tube experiments, large-scale atmospheric modeling, and aircraft measurements.

C. L. "Kelly" Johnson Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering; Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, Student Affairs; Vice President for Student Affairs

Joe Shepherd teaches and conducts research on fluid mechanics, chemistry, thermodynamics, and structural mechanics with applications to high-speed flight, explosion dynamics, energy conversion technologies, and propulsion.

Space-Related Research

Chemical and electric propulsion systems; explosion hazards in launch vehicles and spacecraft.

Professor of Computation and Neural Systems; Executive Officer for Computation and Neural Systems

Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences

Professor Stuart's research is focused on the development of mathematical and algorithmic frameworks for the seamless integration of models with data. He works in the Bayesian formulation of inverse problems, and in data assimilation for dynamical systems. Quantification of uncertainty plays a significant role in this work. Current applications of interest include a variety of problems in the geophysical sciences, and in graph-based learning.

Anna L. Rosen Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering; Andrew and Peggy Cherng Medical Engineering Leadership Chair; Executive Officer for Medical Engineering

Professor Y.C. Tai works on miniature biomedical and MEMS devices including drug pumps, intraocular lens, retinal implants, cortical implants, spinal cord implants, circulating tumor cell (CTC) analysis, blood analysis on-a-chip, and so on. The research often involves broad materials, design, technology and fabrication topics.

Professor of Applied Physics, Aeronautics, and Mechanical Engineering

The Laboratory of Interfacial and Small Scale Transport {LIS2T} specializes in problems involving interface-mediated transport and "interface sculpting" in systems ranging in scale from microns to nanometers. Current topical areas include the study of free surface instabilities and self-assembling structures in liquefiable films triggered by thermal, electrical, Marangoni or magnetic field modulation; intrinsic 3D lithographic patterning of nanofilms; layering transitions and symmetry breaking in nanofilms; fluid interface modulation for micro-optic, photonic and field emission micropropulsion systems;  non-normality and unstable flows at low Reynolds number; biological flows governed by Marangoni forces; development of a universal slip condition for liquid on solid flows; and study of breakdown regimes in continuum flow vs molecular dynamics simulations. We complement full scale experimentation with analytic work, numerical computations and non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations to develop physical insight for theoretical advances as well as reliable design principles for application driven work.

Steele Family Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics

Joel Tropp's work lies at the interface of applied mathematics, electrical engineering, computer science, and statistics. This research concerns the theoretical and computational aspects of data analysis, sparse modeling, randomized linear algebra, and random matrix theory.

Professor of Computer Science; EAS Division Deputy Chair

Professor Umans is interested in theoretical computer science, and especially computational complexity. He enjoys problems with an algebraic flavor, and this often leads to research questions in derandomization and explicit combinatorial constructions, algebraic algorithms, coding theory, and hardness of approximation.