The College is proud to introduce five new faculty members to Drexel Engineering. The newest members of the College are Hao Cheng, Andrew Cohen, Leslie Lamberson, Yared Shifferaw and Kurt Sjoblom. Please join us in welcoming our new faculty members and learn more about their areas of research and the work they’ll be doing in their respective departments.
Dr. Hao Cheng will be an assistant professor in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). Currently a postdoctoral associate in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, Hao researches the development of biomaterials to repair peripheral nerve defects and engineering cell membranes for a broad range of biomedical applications. Cheng received his B.S. and M.S. from Tsinghua University and his Ph.D. in MSE from Northwestern University. At Drexel, Cheng’s group, the Nanobiomaterials and Cell Engineering Laboratory, will work at the interface of materials science and medicine, investigating nanomaterial-cell interactions and developing new biomaterials for medical applications.
Dr. Andrew Cohen will be taking the role of assistant professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Cohen received his B.S. in electrical engineering, M.S. in computer engineering and Ph.D. from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His postdoctoral research was funded by the Huntington's Disease Foundation. He was previously employed as a software design engineer in the DirectX group at Microsoft where he designed operating systems software for gaming applications. He has also served as a microprocessor product engineer at Intel Corporation and holds three patents. Cohen’s research interests lie at the intersection of the life sciences with modern computing. His most cited article to date is "Computational prediction of neural progenitor cell fates," published by Nature Methods.
Dr. Kurt Sjoblom will be an assistant professor in Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering (CAEE). Sjoblom received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000. He has worked as a private consultant to a variety of engineering firms including CDM, Parsons, Jacobs and Pennoni Associates prior to coming to Drexel. For the past 3 years Sjoblom has been an associate teaching faculty and has served as the CAEE graduate advisor for two years. His research interests are modeling of soil moisture, laboratory testing of geo-materials and geotechnical issues relating to infrastructure.
Dr. Yared Shifferaw will be taking the role of assistant professor CAEE. Shifferaw obtained his B.S. from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, in Civil/Structural Engineering. His research interests lie in computational and experimental methods to advance sustainable and resilient solutions to existing and emerging materials in various applications of infrastructural systems.
Dr. Leslie Lamberson will be an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics (MEM). Lamberson recently completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Center for Advanced Metallic & Ceramic Systems working with K.T. Ramesh at Johns Hopkins University. She received her B.S. in aerospace engineering and B.A. in dance performance as a Shipman scholar from the University of Michiganand her M.S. degree in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a thesis on thin foil fatigue and fracture. Lamberson received her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology working with Ares Rosakis, researching hypervelocity impact damage as a NASA Aeronautics scholar and NSF Graduate Research Fellow.