Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing is growing and thrilled to welcome new faculty. As a testament to its steadfast commitment to excellence in research, teaching, and mentorship, the school has added 20 new research and teaching faculty members this academic year.
This cohort of new faculty—spanning eight of the school’s nine departments—expands the school’s research and teaching expertise in the key focus areas of health and well-being, energy and sustainability, resilient and adaptive communities, advanced materials, and future computing. The growth also aligns closely with Rice’s ambitious 10-year strategic plan to become a premier research and teaching institution.
“Welcoming new faculty into our community is one of the most energizing parts of our work,” said Luay Nakhleh, the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Engineering and Computing. “Each year, we grow stronger by recruiting both established leaders and rising stars whose excellence in research and teaching aligns with our school's mission. These latest hires reflect our strategic growth across disciplines and our continued investment in shaping the future of engineering and computing for our students, our university, and the broader community."
All new faculty started on July 1, 2025, unless noted otherwise.
Tenured faculty
Geoffroy Hautier joined as a Trustee Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering and a faculty fellow at the Rice Advanced Materials Institute. He utilizes high-throughput computational approaches to design and discover new materials with improved properties that are proving useful in many fields—from photovoltaics and thermoelectrics to quantum information science and opto-electronics. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011.
Robert LiKamWa joined as an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research is focused on the design and development of software and hardware computing systems with enhanced visual and spatial, haptic, tactile, and olfactory features for use in mobile computing, augmented, virtual, and mixed reality applications. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice in 2016.
Shihong Lin will join as an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering on Jan. 1, 2026. He develops new membrane and electrochemical separation approaches to address critical challenges in sustainable water treatment and resource mining. His new technology—Electrochemical Ion Pumping (EIP)—offers the possibility of simultaneous desalination and selective metal recovery from industrial wastewater. He received his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Duke University in 2012.
Huixia (Judy) Wang joined as the Chair and William Marsh Rice Trustee Professor in Data Science. She develops mathematical and statistical models to address complex biomedical and environmental problems. One of her current projects involves establishing mathematical foundations to construct human digital twins—virtual models of a person’s brain—as an integrated platform to uncover new personalized treatments for autism spectrum disorders and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Her other projects involve predicting the vulnerability of specific geographical areas to flooding and identifying socio-economic factors underlying chronic health conditions. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006.
Tenure-track faculty
Aamand Anders will join as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science on Jan. 1, 2026. He is interested in solving theoretical problems in computer science related to differential privacy, learning-augmented algorithms, distribution testing, hashing, graph theory, and computational geometry. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Copenhagen in 2020.
Alexander (Sasha) Davydov joined as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research explores the reliable control of complex engineering systems, machine learning architectures and optimizers, neural networks, and multi-agent robotics using control theory, machine learning and optimization. He obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2025.
Alireza Fallah joined as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science. His research focuses on machine learning theory, game theory, market and mechanism design, optimization, and privacy. He received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2023.
Nakul Garg joined as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is interested in developing new wireless technologies embedded with sustainable artificial intelligence systems for low-power sensing. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland in 2025.
Tong (Tony) Geng will join as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering on Jan. 1, 2026 and has served as adjunct assistant professor since May 2025. His research lies at the intersection of computer architecture and systems and generative AI, with a recent focus on developing a new class of brain-inspired physical AI known as Dynamical-System AI. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Boston University in 2020.
Amanda Nash joined as an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering in 2025. She utilizes techniques in immunoengineering, molecular diagnostics and materials science to develop innovative strategies for controlled modulation of the immune system to treat cancers, brain injury, and other disease conditions. She received her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Rice University in 2022.
Wei Qiu will join as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering on Jan. 1, 2026. She utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify biomarkers underlying diseases and aging and also plans to leverage this expertise to enhance the efficacy of healthcare processes. She will receive her Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington in 2025, with a graduate certificate in Computational Molecular Biology.
Kelsey Swingle joined the Department of Bioengineering as an assistant professor. She plans to engineer novel biomaterial-based drug delivery technologies for applications in immune engineering, vaccines, and women's health. She completed her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2025.
Sang-ri Yi joined as an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She develops computational methods to quantify uncertainty and risk to generate multi-scale hazard resilience assessments of urban infrastructure. She received a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Seoul National University in 2020.
Yirui (Arlene) Zhang will join as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Rice Advanced Materials Institute on Nov. 1, 2025. She develops electrochemical and plasmonic materials, and new spectroscopic tools to understand and control processes involved in energy storage and biosensing. She received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2022.
Xinyi (Cindy) Zhang will join as assistant professor in the Department of Statistics on Oct. 1, 2025. She develops statistical and machine learning methods for large-scale and complex health sciences data such as neuroimaging analysis or genomics studies. She received a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Toronto in 2023.
Non-tenure track faculty
Amirpooya Dardashti joined the School of Engineering and Computing as an assistant teaching professor. He will teach courses designed to foster and enhance engineering students’ workplace communication skills as a part of the Activate Engineering Communication Program. He is expected to complete a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Texas A&M University in Aug. 2025.
Jorge Loyo joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as assistant teaching professor. He was the associate director of education for NEWT at Rice since 2016 and served as the director and academic advisor for the Energy and Water Sustainability minor since 2021. He will continue teaching the course, ‘Sustainable Water Purification for the Developing World,’ and co-teach a course on sustainable design. He completed his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2006.
Thanh Nguyen joined the Rice Center for Engineering Leadership as a professor in the practice. She has over two decades of industry and leadership experience and is the holder of two US patents. She will teach a course in engineering project management and leadership action as well as a course on the development of high-performing engineering teams. She received a Masters of Engineering in Electrical Engineering (MEE) and business (MBA) from the University of Idaho in 2012.
Gina Pizzo joined the Department of Statistics as a lecturer. She will teach linear regression and statistics for data science. She received a Ph.D. in Statistics from Michigan State University in 2025.