This academic year, CSL is pleased to welcome eight new faculty members, all of whom are also new to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They include:
Nancy M. Amato, Head of the Department of Computer Science and Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering
In January 2019, Amato became the first female director of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Computer Sciences Department. Prior to her new role she was Unocal Professor and Regents Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, where she co-directed the Parasol Lab. Amato’s main areas of research focus are motion planning and robotics, computational biology and geometry, and parallel and distributed computing. This job is a return to campus for Amato, who holds a PhD in computer science from Illinois. Amato has received numerous awards and recognitions, including a National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award and being honored as a Fellow of AAAI, AAAS, ACM, and IEEE.
Eric Chitambar, Associate Professor
Chitambar has appointments in both the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Physics. He is best known for his highly-cited insights into entanglement theory and is focused on the mathematical theories and practical applications of quantum entanglement and other fundamental quantum phenomena. Prior to joining Illinois, Chitambar was an associate professor in physics at Southern Illinois University. He received his PhD in physics from the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor. In 2014, he earned the prestigious NSF Career Award.
Roy Dong, Research Assistant Professor
Dong joined the ECE Department in January 2019. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher and visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also received his PhD in electrical engineering and computer science. Prior to this, Dong received a BS Honors in Computer Engineering and a BS Honors in Economics from Michigan State University. Dong's research uses tools from control theory, optimization, and economics to: address new estimation and privacy problems arising from the Internet of Things, characterize human decision-making in dynamic settings, and design mechanisms to promote socially desirable equilibria in societal-scale cyberphysical systems.
Katie Driggs-Campbell, Assistant Professor
Driggs-Campbell has been a member of the ECE Department since January 2019. Her research focuses on exploring and uncovering structure in complex human-robot systems to create more intelligent, interactive autonomy. She draws from the fields of optimization, learning & AI, and control theory, applied to human robot interaction and autonomous vehicles. Before arriving on campus she was a postdoctoral research scholar in the Aero-Astro Department in the Stanford Intelligent Systems Lab. Driggs-Campbell received her MS and PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Bin Hu, Assistant Professor
Hu joined the ECE Department in Fall 2018. His research focuses on building fundamental connections between control and machine learning. Prior to coming to Illinois, Hu was a postdoctoral researcher at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Minnesota.
Kirill Levchenko, Associate Professor
Levchenko returns to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to join the ECE Department. He got his bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and computer science at Illinois in the early 2000s. Levchenko’s research interests include communication networks, computer security, and systems modeling. Prior to joining the Illinois faculty, he was a postdoctoral scholar, project scientist, and assistant research scientist at the University of California, San Diego.
Ilan Shomorony, Assistant Professor
Shomorony has joined the ECE Department faculty. Previously a postdoctoral fellow and visiting scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, he has also worked as a data scientist at Human Longevity, Inc. Shomorony’s research focuses on algorithms and computational complexity, communication networks, and information theory. He earned his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University through the Olin Graduate Fellowship.
Melkior Ornik, Assistant Professor
Ornik joins the Aerospace Engineering faculty here on campus. Prior to his arrival, he was a research associate and postdoctoral fellow for the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the intersection of control and learning in complex environments. Ornik received his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Toronto.