The Director of KFSCIS, Dr. Jason Liu recently announced the hiring of four new faculty members for Fall 2024 and one new faculty member who will be joining the ranks in Fall 2025.
Dr. Truong Nghiem will be joining KFSCIS as a tenured Associate Professor in August 2024. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Systems Engineering from the University Of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining FIU he served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, then at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland before rejoining the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Nghiem joined Northern Arizona University as a tenure-track assistant professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems in 2018. Dr. Nghiem is an expert in learning and control of intelligent cyber-physical systems with applications in autonomous systems, including Smart energy systems and robotics. He is a successful researcher and has published over 60 journal articles and conference papers. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2023.
KFSCIS will also welcome Dr. Kevin Bello as a tenure-track assistant professor to the faculty. Dr. Bello, who is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University and at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, is currently on an NSF Computing Innovation Fellowship. Dr. Bello will bring a wealth of knowledge in causal machine learning, statistical machine learning, optimization, and machine learning applications in neuroscience, genomics, healthcare, vision, language, and robotics. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from Purdue University in 2021. Dr. Bello will join the KFSCIS faculty in Fall 2025 following a gap year working in industry.
KFSCIS will also be welcoming three new teaching faculty in fall 2024. Dr. Niemah Osman will be joining the faculty as an Assistant Teaching Professor. Dr. Osman received her Ph.D. degree in Communication Networks from the University of Leeds in the UK in 2015. Prior to joining FIU, Dr. Osman served as an associate professor at the Sudan University of Science and Technology, as well as serving in a part-time capacity as a member of the Arab Open University in Sudan. Her areas of expertise include computer networks, mobile and wireless networks, and Internet of things (IOT).
Dr. Bhargav Bhatkalkar will also be joining the faculty as an Assistant Teaching Professor. Dr. Bhatkalkar received his PhD degree in computer science from Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India in 2020. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Digipen Institute of Technology in Singapore. Dr. Bhatkalkar as research expertise in the design and implementation of deep learning algorithms for medical image processing applications, and network and data security applications.
Dr. Fatima Boujarwah received her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012. She has been an assistant professor at Kuwait University in the College of Life Sciences, in the Information Science department since 2012. She has also served as a Cultural Attaché at the Kuwait Cultural Office in Los Angeles, California, in 2022 to 2023. Dr. Fatima Bourjarwah will be joining the faculty as an Assistant Teaching Professor.