September 11, 2022

Mizzou Engineering welcomed 14 new faculty members, including 11 tenure-track faculty who bring expertise in areas such as pollution remediation, manufacturing and computational material science.

“We’re excited to bring in this group of educators and researchers who will make tremendous contributions to the College,” Dean Noah Manring said. “Students will, no doubt, benefit greatly from their teaching and research expertise.”

Joining Mizzou Engineering are:

• Melissa Collins will serve as First Year Engineering coordinator and an assistant teaching professor in biomedical, biological and chemical engineering. Collins has a PhD from Texas A&M University and a bachelor’s from the University of Nebraska. She has a background in vascular biomechanics and spent several years working in the medical device field supporting surgical navigation devices within the neurosurgery field. As First Year Engineering coordinator, Collins will coordinate Engineering 1000 and 1050 courses and associated peer mentoring.
• Maryam Salehi is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. An NSF Early CAREER awardee, Salehi’s technical focus is in contaminant fate and transport, drinking water quality and plastic pollution, and she applies her expertise to investigate pollutants’ fate within the environment. She previously served as an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Memphis. Salehi has PhDs from Purdue, where she completed her postdoctoral studies, and from Amirkabir University of Technology in Iran, where she also earned a master’s degree. She also holds a master’s from the University of South Alabama and a bachelor’s from Yazd University in Iran.
• Filiz Bunyak Ersoy is an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Her research interests include image processing, computer vision, artificial intelligence and machine learning for biomedical image analysis and visual surveillance with special emphasis on motion analysis, level set and deep learning methods. She has more than 100 publications in high-impact conferences, journals, and books and has been granted two U.S. patents. Ersoy has a PhD from Missouri S&T and a master’s and bachelor’s from Istanbul Technical University in Turkey.
• Qingyun Huang is an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science and is the PayneCrest Faculty Scholar in Power Engineering. Huang, whose research focus is power electronics, has a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was part of the Semiconductor Power Electronics Center. Huang’s research will be applied to electric vehicles, renewable energy, power generation, solid-state-transformers, and computing power conversions.
• Mert Korkali is an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Before joining MU, he worked as a Research Staff Member at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he served as a principal investigator (PI) and co-PI on several projects on power grid operations and planning, solar-grid integration, and extreme event modeling. Korkali’s research focus is in power systems. He has a PhD from Northeastern University, a master’s from Northeastern University and a bachelor’s from Bahçeşehir University.
• Ali Shiri Sichani is an assistant teaching professor in electrical engineering and computer science. Previously, he was an instructor at the University of Memphis and worked in industry. Shiri Sichani has PhDs from the University of South Florida and Purdue University, a master’s from the University of South Alabama and a master’s and bachelor’s degree from Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch.
• Peifen Zhu is an assistant professor in the Department of electrical engineering and computer science. Previously, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics at the University of Tulsa. She received a PhD from Lehigh University. An NSF CAREER Award recipient, her research work covers the theoretical and experimental aspects of photonics, optoelectronic devices, optical physics and electronic/photonic materials for energy efficiency and renewable energy.
• Yi Wang is an assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering. His primary research interests include advanced micro/nano manufacturing technology, brain-machine interface development, biomedical sensors and devices development, ultrasonic-assisted machining, and computer-aided design and manufacturing. Wang has a PhD from North Carolina State University and a master’s and bachelor’s from Tianjin University in China.
• Jiaming Jiang is an assistant teaching professor in the Information Technology Program. Before that, she was a lecturer at UC Davis. She has taught a variety of courses, including Python, C, Haskell, Prolog, data structures, and semantics of programming languages. Her research focus during her PhD was on formal methods. She has developed a model of a security access control systems using mathematical logics. Her technical focus areas include formal methods and various programming languages, including Python, C++, C, Rust, Haskell and Prolo.
• Scottie Murrell is an assistant professional practice professor in the Information Technology program. Murrell’s focus is on Computer programming and Computer Systems design. His research is in the field of Extended Reality and how it applies to the field of education. His previous work as a adjunct instructor for virtual reality and networking was also at the Mizzou, where he obtained his master’s and bachelor’s degrees.
• Yue Jin is an assistant professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering. Before joining Mizzou, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate at MIT. His research interests span multiple areas of thermal-fluid sciences and nuclear engineering, including fluid flow mass and heat transfer, reactor thermal hydraulics, design, modeling and optimization of complex energy systems. He received his PhD from the Pennsylvania State University.
• Mushuang Liu is an assistant professor from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Missouri. Before joining Missouri, she worked as a postdoc at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. She received her PhD from University of Texas at Arlington and a bachelor’s from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. Her research interest lies in control and optimization for multi-agent systems using techniques from control theory, game theory and machine learning.
• Christopher O’Bryan is an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. He received his PhD, master’s and bachelor’s from the University of Florida. His research focuses on exploring the instabilities that arise at the interface between soft materials, leveraging these instabilities to design new biomaterials, and developing new design principles for soft matter manufacturing.
• Yao Zhai is an assistant professor with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. His research interest is in design, fabrication and characterization of optical materials and opto-electronic devices for energy, infrared imaging and biomedical engineering. He has a PhD from the University of Colorado-Boulder, a master’s from University of Massachusetts-Lowell and from Chinese Academy of Science and a bachelor’s from Tianjin University.

Learn more about faculty career opportunities here.