About Us

Ajay Anand

Assistant Professor and Deputy Director, Goergen Institute for Data Science

Ajay Anand, an assistant professor of instruction in data science, is a deputy director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science. Anand comes to the University from Carestream Health in Rochester, where he worked as technical manager in medical ultrasound. Before that, he spent 10 years as a senior research scientist and senior medical research scientist at Philips Healthcare Research. In his administrative role at the Goergen Institute, Anand is responsible for managing data science education programs and identifying opportunities for expanding curricular offerings.

Anand’s research has involved medical ultrasound and biomedical signal processing. He is currently working to automate ultrasound technology to make it readily available for emergency medical technicians and others who are not fully trained in ultrasound.

Along with being coinventor on more than 25 patent applications, he has coauthored more than 35 journal articles and conference proceedings. His technical interests are in time-series analysis, physical model- based predictive analysis, and biomedical data analytics.

Anand earned his PhD and MS degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Washington and his MS in biomedical engineering from the University of Texas. In the 2018–19 academic year, he will teach the data science capstone and practicum course.

Undergraduate degree(s): BA, electronics engineering, University of Bombay (1998)

Graduate degree(s): MS, biomedical engineering, University of Texas Southwestern (2000); MS, electrical engineering, University of Washington (2003); PhD, electrical engineering, University of Washington (2005)

Most recent appointment(s): senior research scientist, Carestream Health, Rochester, New York

Hesam Askari

Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Hesam Askari has been appointed a tenure-track assistant professor in mechanical engineering, after serving as an instructional-track faculty member since 2016. Before coming to Rochester, Askari was a postdoctoral associate at MIT, where he developed a simple, predictive model for calculating the force required to move objects over or through whole classes of previously untested granular materials in a variety of settings.

The model can be applied to problems such as designing vehicles to traverse granular terrains on distant planets or targeting the delivery of drugs through particle-filled tissues in the human body.

Askari also creates models that enable him to study how changes in the size and orientation of grains encapsulated in metals can affect the overall properties of those metals, for example, making them stronger or more flexible as needed.

He has authored or coauthored 10 papers that have appeared in such journals as Nature Materials and International Journal of Plasticity.

Askari teaches courses in finite elements and engineering mechanics.

He received a BS in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Iran University of Science and Technology, and his PhD in mechanical engineering from Washington State University.

Undergraduate degree(s): BS, mechanical engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology (2004)

Graduate degree(s): MS, aerospace engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology (2008); PhD, mechanical engineering, Washington State University (2014)

Most recent appointment(s): postdoctoral associate, MIT

Ethan Burnham-Fay

Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Ethan Burnham-Fay joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering as an assistant professor of instruction in January, after completing his PhD in the department.

For his PhD, Burnham-Fay studied ways to measure and to dampen the effects of background vibrations that can interfere with inertial confinement fusion experiments at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) at Rochester and at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore.

He has expertise in optical metrology techniques, piezoelectrics, and vibration control.

Burnham-Fay served as a Horton Fellow at LLE. He has been the lead or coauthor of five papers accepted or published in journals and conference proceedings.

As an instructional-track faculty member, he will teach engineering computation, mechanical systems, introduction to solid mechanics, precision instrument design, and introduction to solid modeling.

Undergraduate degree(s): BS, mechanical engineering, University of Rochester (2010)

Graduate degree(s): MS, mechanical engineering, University of Rochester (2011); PhD, mechanical engineering, University of Rochester (2018)

Most recent appointment(s): joined the department as an instructional-track assistant professor in January, after completing his PhD in the department

Michael Giacomelli

Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering

Michael Giacomelli joins the Department of Biomedical Engineering after serving as a postdoctoral fellow and research scientist in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT.

At MIT, Giacomelli developed two photon imaging methods to assist in the surgical treatment of breast cancer. The research could improve the success rate of surgery by enabling surgeons to evaluate tissue as it is removed from the body.

At Rochester, Giacomelli will explore the applications of advanced imaging technology to other surgery and in medicine in general with the goal of improving diagnosis and surgical management of cancer.

He is the author or coauthor of more than 25 journal articles and was the recipient of a postdoctoral fellowship from the NIH.

Giacomelli received BS degrees in computer science and computer engineering from the University of Arizona and a master’s degree in electrical engineering and PhD in biomedical engineering from Duke University.

Undergraduate degree(s): BS in computer science and in computer engineering, University of Arizona (2006)

Graduate degree(s): MS, electrical engineering; PhD, biomedical engineering, Duke University (2012) 

Most recent appointment(s): postdoctoral associate and fellow and research scientist in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT

Michael Heilemann

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Michael Heilemann has joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an assistant professor of instruction, after completing his PhD in the department in 2018.

Heilemann will teach senior design and a portfolio class in the department’s audio and music engineering program for undergraduates and will also supervise projects that master’s students in electrical engineering do for research credit.

For his PhD thesis at Rochester, Heilemann worked on a project to develop technology that would make screens of computers, televisions, and mobile devices vibrate in such a way that the screens themselves become speakers. The work aims to reconcile a growing demand for audio displays that are thin, lightweight, and portable against the market forces that value larger and heavier speakers. Heilemann’s PhD thesis focused specifically on how to localize vibrations that produce sound to just one part of the screen.

The research has resulted in three journal publications with Heilemann as lead or coauthor. He has also been lead or coauthor of seven peer-reviewed conference publications.

Heilemann received his BS in physics from Canisius College in 2013 and his master’s in electrical engineering at Rochester in 2015.

Undergraduate degree(s): BS, physics, Canisius College (2013)

Graduate degree(s): MS, electrical engineering, University of Rochester (2015); PhD, electrical engineering, University of Rochester (2018)

Most recent appointment(s): PhD student, University of Rochester

Whasil Lee

Assistant Professor, Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Pharmacology and Physiology

Whasil Lee joins the Department of Biomedical Engineering from Duke University, where she most recently was a postdoctoral fellow.

With a background in computer engineering, electrical engineering, applied physics, and mechanical engineering and materials science, Lee is currently exploring how cells convert mechanical signals into biochemical responses, a process known as mechanotransduction.

At Rochester, she plans to continue that research, with a particular emphasis on how ion channels in cell membranes play a role in the development, maintenance, and degeneration of knee-joint cells. Such work may have applications for treatments for arthritis and other conditions.

She will also hold a joint appointment in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology in the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Lee plans to teach a class introducing advanced undergraduate students and graduate students to the structural biology of DNA and proteins and another class on the fundamental concepts of mechanotransduction.

The author or coauthor of more than a dozen journal articles, Lee was the recipient of a New Investigator Recognition Award from the Orthopaedic Research Society.

Undergraduate degree(s): BS, information and communication engineering, Kangwon National University (2002)

Graduate degree(s): MS, electrical engineering, Oklahoma State University (2002); MS, applied physics, Columbia University (2005); PhD, mechanical engineering and materials science, Duke University (2011)

Most recent appointment(s): postdoctoral fellow, Duke University

Astrid Müller

Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering

Astrid Müller joins the Department of Chemical Engineering faculty as an assistant professor. Prior to her appointment at Rochester, Müller served as a staff scientist at the California Institute of Technology’s Beckman Institute.

Müller’s research focuses on understanding which properties or combination of properties govern a material’s performance, particularly as it relates to solar energy. At the Beckman Institute, she was working to develop efficient methods of oxidizing water molecules, which involves the creation of hydrogen ions and oxygen molecules. At Rochester, she plans to take the next step by developing selective carbon dioxide catalysts capable of generating sustainable, carbon-neutral liquid fuels.

Müller received her PhD from the Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität in Germany. She has more than 40 articles to her credit in a wide variety of peer-reviewed journals, including Chemical Reviews, Energy & Environmental Science, and Materials Horizons. In 2017, she was presented the Exemplary Research Mentor Award by the Chemical Physics Laboratory at Concordia University Irvine. She was also one of 10 people worldwide to be named Outstanding Reviewer for Chemical Communications in 2016.

This fall, Müller will be teaching an upper-level course in classical thermodynamics.

Graduate degree(s): MS, chemistry and chemical engineering, Technische Universität München (1997); PhD, physical chemistry, Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität in Germany (2000)

Most recent appointment(s): staff scientist at the Beckman Institute, California Institute of Technology

Sreepathi Pai

Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science

Sreepathi Pai joins the Department of Computer Science as an assistant professor after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin.

Pai is an expert in computer systems, compilers, and architecture, specifically in parallel and distributed systems.

While at Austin, he created a compiler framework to help computer scientists use graphics processing units (GPUs) to offer a powerful new computing tool for processing increasingly large Google- and Facebook- scale data sets. The data sets are typically represented as incredibly complex graphs of interconnected nodes, but the lack of uniformity makes it difficult for different GPUs to work with each other and with core processing units. Pai designed his framework to translate high-level algorithms to efficient low-level GPU code.

He has coauthored 12 papers, one of which was named the IEEE/Amazon/DARPA GraphChallenge Champion in 2017.

Pai teaches the course Parallel and Distributed Systems and Synthesis of Systems.

He received a BE in computer engineering from the University of Mumbai and a PhD in computer engineering from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Undergraduate degree(s): BE, computer engineering, University of Mumbai (2006)

Graduate degree(s): PhD, computer engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (2015)

Most recent appointment(s): postdoctoral fellowship, University of Texas, Austin

Laura Chernak Slane

Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Laura Chernak Slane has joined the University as an assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Mechanical Engineering after serving as an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Trine University. While at Trine she taught classes in advanced biomechanics (her specialty), statics and strength of materials, and research techniques.

At Rochester, she will teach classes in computer-aided design, statics, and dynamics. She also hopes to have an opportunity to mentor students doing research projects.

As a researcher, Slane is interested in how mechanical principles can be applied to better understand the function of muscles, tendons, and joints to reduce injury risk and improve rehabilitation.

She has been a lead or colead author of more than a dozen papers on the biomechanics of tendons and joints in the Journal of Biomechanics and other publications. She received an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at KU Leuven in Belgium to study how ultrasound elastography could be used to measure soft tissue mechanics after total knee replacement.

She received a BS in mechanical engineering from Bucknell University and MS and PhD degrees in biomedical engineering at University of Wisconsin– Madison.

Undergraduate degree(s): BS, mechanical engineering, Bucknell University (2009)

Graduate degree(s): MS, biomedical engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison (2011); PhD, biomedical engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison (2014)

Most recent appointment(s): assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Trine University

Yuhao Zhu

Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science

Yuhao Zhu has joined the Department of Computer Science as an assistant professor, after serving as a visiting researcher at ARM Research, where he worked on designing next-generation mobile systems to feature such emerging applications as augmented and virtual reality.

Zhu is an expert in computer architecture. His recent work focuses on creating systems to more efficiently run web applications and process visual data on headsets, smart phones, and other mobile devices. The research involves balancing the need to be user responsive against the large amounts of processing power that are required.

He has been the lead author of articles for the IEEE Micro Special Issue on Mobile Systems, Computer Architecture Letters (awarded best of in 2014), and ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems. He has also coauthored book chapters for GPU Solutions to Multi-Scale Problems in Science and Engineering and Theoretical and Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science.

He teaches the courses Computer Organization and Mobile Systems Architecture.

Undergraduate degree(s): BS, computer science and engineering, Beihang University in Beijing, China (2010)

Graduate degree(s): PhD, electrical and computer engineering, University of Texas at Austin (2017)

Most recent appointment(s): visiting researcher at ARM Research