Meet the cohort of new faculty members joining Voiland College during the 2024-2025 school year.
Hala Barakat
Assistant Professor, Architecture, School of Design and Construction.
Hala Barakat focuses her studies on early design pedagogy and social justice in architecture. She holds a Master of Architecture and a Master of Urban and Community design from the University of South Florida’s School of Architecture and Community Design. Before coming to WSU, she was an assistant professor at the University of Idaho.
Xuanyu Cao
Assistant Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Dr. Cao joins WSU from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he has been an assistant professor with the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering since 2021. He also was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University and the Coordinated Science Lab at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research entails developing and analyzing distributed/online learning and optimization algorithms with various practical considerations, including communication efficiency, imperfect feedback information, imperfect information transmission, performativity, and data privacy & security. He is a senior member of IEEE, an editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, and the lead guest editor for the special issue on “Communication-Efficient Distributed Learning over Networks” in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications in 2023. He is a TPC member for MobiHoc 2022-2024, INFOCOM 2025, and WiOpt 2024. Dr. Cao holds a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and a master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Neil Corrigan
Visiting Teaching Faculty, Cybersecurity.
Dr. Corrigan will serve as a teaching professor, instructing diverse cybersecurity courses. His career at Hanford in computer science spanned decades, concentrating on software development and cybersecurity. Alongside his industry tenure, he significantly contributed to WSU Tri-Cities as an adjunct faculty member in Computer Science. He has seamlessly integrated his practical software development experience into academia, imparting courses on software engineering principles and recently overseeing the senior software design project. His academic credentials include a PhD and master’s degree from Washington State University, complemented by a bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah.
Dan Cronan
Assistant Professor, School of Design and Construction.
Dr. Cronan is a landscape architect who will be focusing his work on food and the built environment. Before joining WSU, he was an assistant professor in landscape architecture and a senior research associate in the Center for Resilient Communities at the University of Idaho. He also was at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He holds a PhD in Environmental Science from the University of Idaho, a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Oregon, and a bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University.
Seyyedmilad (Milad) Ebrahimi
Assistant Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Dr. Ebrahimi’s main areas of research interests include modeling and control of renewable energy systems, power systems, power electronics, and electrical machines; as well as power-hardware-in-the-loop real-time electromagnetic transient simulations, for the development of the next-generation sustainable energy systems. Before joining WSU, he was a postdoctoral research and teaching fellow at The University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada. He received his Ph.D. degree from UBC, and his M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees from Sharif University of Technology, Iran, all in electrical engineering.
Mohamed Elmahallawy
Assistant Professor, Cybersecurity.
Dr. Elmahallawy conducted research on federated learning for LEO satellite constellations and medical applications, trustworthy artificial intelligence, and IoT. His research also encompasses cybersecurity in machine/federated learning. Prior to joining Washington State University Tri-Cities, he served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Computer Science at Missouri University of Science and Technology. There, he focused on developing a global ML approach for enhancing miners’ safety in underground mines. He holds a PhD from Missouri University of Science and Technology, as well as master’s degrees from the University of Rostock in Germany and Benha University in Egypt. He completed his bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering at the Higher Institute of Engineering in Egypt.
Bill Furman
Instructor, Interior Design, School of Design and Construction.
Bill Furman aims to bridge the gap between academic experiences and disciplinary professional values, balancing imparting knowledge and skill, and preparing students for human-centered thinking that supports all end-users while simultaneously preparing them for careers as interior design practitioners.
Thomas Gilray
Associate Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Before joining WSU, Dr. Gilray was Victor Basili Fellow at the University of Maryland, at College Park, and then Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His research interests center around the design and scalable implementation of high-level programming languages and systems for reasoning automatically about programs. He has contributed to the design of tunable whole-program control-flow analyses, information-flow analyses, contract verification systems, and has invented novel Datalog-based languages for implementing these analyses efficiently—and declaratively. He has also contributed to high-performance-computing techniques for accelerating data-parallel relational algebra and sparse linear algebra on supercomputers. He holds a PhD from the University of Utah.
Rahul Gupta
Assistant Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Dr. Gupta’s research specializes in grid-aware control of distributed energy resources in active distribution networks, addressing various uncertainties through measurement-based and data-driven control and estimation schemes. Before joining Washington State University, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). At Georgia Tech, he developed methods for generating synthetic power distribution networks, hosting capacity analysis, and different fairness-aware operation and planning schemes. Rahul earned his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) in 2018 and 2023, respectively. He received the EPFL PhD Thesis Distinction in Electrical Engineering in 2023 for his exceptional doctoral research.
Hyeyoung Koh
Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Dr. Koh is conducting research in the area of intelligent and AI-aided design of steel and hybrid structures with an emphasis on their resilience and sustainability. Her group conducts research on the next generation of structural design and analysis by employing various methodological approaches including data analytics, distributed sensing, physical experiments, and computational modeling. Before joining WSU, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She received the 2024 Yoon Duk Kim Young Researcher Award from the Structural Stability Research Council (SSRC) within the American Institute of Steel Construction. She serves as vice-chair of the SSRC Task Group 03 – Steel Systems and as a committee member on the Stability Committee in the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute. Dr. Koh holds a PhD from University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Hanyang University in South Korea.
Parteek Kumar
Associate Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Dr. Kumar conducts research in machine learning, natural language processing, large language models, and AI applications for social good. Before joining WSU, he was a professor at Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala, India, and a visiting professor at Whitman College, USA, and the LAMBDA Lab at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He holds a doctorate from Thapar Institute, and a master’s from BITS Pilani, India. Dr. Kumar is an author of databases and data mining textbooks, including “Data Mining and Data Warehousing” published by Cambridge University Press. He leads significant research projects, teaches online courses on Udemy, and runs a YouTube channel.
Sihui Li
Assistant Professor, Computer Science.
Dr. Li specializes in research on task and motion planning algorithms in robotics, optimization, parallel algorithms, and human-robot interaction (HRI). Prior to joining Washington State University Tri-Cities, she served as a graduate research assistant at the Dynamic Automata Lab (DyALab) at Colorado School of Mines, focusing on feasibility analysis in robot motion planning. She holds a PhD from Colorado School of Mines, master’s degrees from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Science and Technology in China.
Bo Liu
Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering.
Dr. Liu conducted research on cyber-physical security of power systems, machine learning applications, and state estimation in smart grids. His work aims to advance smart grid cyber-physical security through innovative contributions to planning, operational strategies, and control methodologies. Leveraging integrated technologies such as computer and network systems, power system analysis, graph theory, game theory, and mathematical optimization, he seeks to transform the field. Prior to joining WSU Tri-Cities, he served as a Research Assistant Professor and as a Postdoc at Kansas State University. His focus there was on modeling, enhancing, and developing moving target defense (MTD) to detect and prevent cyberattacks against smart grids. In the summer of 2018, he was a graduate research intern at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He holds a PhD from Kansas State University, as well as along with master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Harbin Institute of Technology in China.
Nishtha Madaan
Assistant Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Dr. Madaan conducts research on large language model (LLM) safety, focusing on developing algorithms to enhance trust in LLMs. She has been a research staff member at IBM Research, where she has been an integral part of the team for nine years. Her academic background includes a PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD). She earned her B.Tech. and an MS from the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad, (IIITH). She has published various papers at renowned AI conferences and was recognized among the Top 100 Women in AI Ethics in 2019, being the only selection from India. She has mentored over 70 students throughout her career.
Satyajit Mojumder
Assistant Professor, School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.
Dr. Mojumder’s research focuses on developing innovative computational methods to address large-scale challenges in advanced materials and manufacturing systems. He is exploring the integration of data science algorithms into computational methods, creating mechanistic reduced-order models crucial for tackling complex computational problems within the domain of multiscale, multifunctional materials produced through advanced manufacturing processes. These methods have led to the establishment of a startup company (HIDENN-AI, LLC) and secured funding for multiple SBIR/STTR projects, including NSF ACCESS computational resources for which he served as the Principal Investigator. He holds a bachelor and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Before coming to WSU, he was a faculty member at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. His collaborative research has resulted in 39 journal articles, 17 conference proceedings, two invited talks, four patents and disclosures, and fellowship grants and awards, including the Walter Murphy Fellowship, the Predictive Science and Engineering Design Fellowship, an NSF travel grant and the Northwestern TGS conference grant.
Wheaton Schroeder
Assistant Professor, Gene and Linda School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering.
Dr. Schroeder’s research is in the area of multi-scale metabolic modeling. Metabolic models of metabolism are mathematical, network-based, and large-scale representations of the set of chemical reactions for which various types of evidence exists. He is studying systems that can be modeled, model types, model applications, the development of new modeling techniques, and publicly available yet underleveraged datasets, along with potential collaborations within WSU and the PNNL. He aims to develop a broad program of research addressing key challenges such as improved plant tolerance to heat and drought stresses, drug repurposing, and designing cyanobacteria as CO2 to biochemical platforms. Schroeder hold a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University and a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Before coming to WSU, he was a postdoctoral scholar at Pennsylvania State University.
Jesse Weaver
Instructor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
A WSU alumnus, Jesse Weaver has more than seven years of industry experience in the area of structural engineering and as a staff engineer at the Idaho Transportation Department. He will be teaching the department’s capstone, ethics, and geotechnical engineering courses and will serve as co-advisor for the WSU chapter of ASCE.
Huiyun Wu
Assistant Professor, Environmental Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Dr. Wu’s research is the area of microbial water equality, environmental microbiome, and water research. Her research is focused on data-driven strategies for advancing water sustainability, molecular microbiology applications, and environmental microbiome investigation. She has worked on multiple interdisciplinary research projects, including water reuse, wastewater-based epidemiology and sanitary sewage overflow survey, environmental metagenomics, microbial source tracking, stormwater management, and microbial water quality modeling. She is also interested in participating citizen science and serving the community. Before joining WSU, Dr. Wu participated in a two-year Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) fellowship with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine at Tulane University. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Michigan State University.