Three New Faculty Join UCI Engineering
Sept. 25, 2023 - The UCI Samueli School of Engineering welcomes three new faculty for the 2023-2024 academic year.
Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research interests:
Borowski’s research focuses on transportation equity and justice, shared mobility, community needs and impacts, and travel behavior during extreme events. She studies the phenomenon of emergent volunteerism and shared resources after disasters and aims to use advanced technology and engineering skills to support these philanthropic efforts.
Borowski is striving to advance transportation equity and cites that UCI’s commitment to support students and communities from diverse backgrounds through programs like the Black Thriving Initiative was one of the reasons she decided to come to UCI. She is looking forward to enhancing infrastructure equity through her work at UCI’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.
She has authored eight research papers and two reports in peer-reviewed journals on issues such as evacuation ridesharing during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has also given over two dozen presentations at conferences on transportation equity issues and a dozen talks at Northwestern University, where she received a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering.
Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Research interests:
Wang is working to help decarbonize industry by developing new nanomaterials and electrifying manufacturing. She’s interested in electrified ultrahigh-temperature synthesis, manufacturing and processing for energy and catalysis, in-depth exploration of emerging nanomaterials formation through ultrafast, ultrahigh-temperature apparatus, and development of sustainable wood-based nanomaterials.
Wang said she’s looking forward to working with UCI’s exceptional mechanical and aerospace engineering faculty and is very impressed with the facilities at the Irvine Materials Research Institute (IMRI), which include transmission electron microscopes (TEM) that can view nanoparticles and atoms. She believes UCI is a place where her research in nanomaterials can thrive.
She comes to UCI from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she received a Ph.D. in chemistry and worked as an assistant research scientist. Wang has authored and co-authored 61 research papers.
Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dean is ready to grow the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s expertise and course offerings in cross-disciplinary sustainable civil systems. He looks forward to creating collaborations with other faculty members that strengthen UCI’s position as a leader in developing zero-carbon and low-energy sustainable urban engineering systems.
Dean comes to UCI from the University of Texas at Austin where he received his Ph.D. in civil and transportation engineering. His research has been funded by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the Department of Energy, and the California Resilient and Innovative Mobility Initiative.
