The College of Engineering is pleased to welcome four new faculty members this month. Each brings knowledge, expertise, and diverse perspectives that will enrich our academic community. Please join us in welcoming them to the college.
Hyeongmin Seo
Assistant Professor
Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Hyeongmin Seo earned a PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and a bachelor's degree in biological engineering from Konkuk University in South Korea. His doctoral work focused on understanding and harnessing biological modularity across biological scales from gene to protein, to metabolic pathway, to metabolic network, and to microbial consortia for sustainable esters production. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Delaware, he studied synthetic biology and metabolic engineering of a microbial consortium to develop a carbon neutral/negative chemical production platform. Seo is passionate about addressing fundamental challenges in microbial biotechnology to tackle sustainability, health, and environmental problems. His research at Iowa will aim to understand how biological components interact with each other and constitute a high-performing biosystem with high robustness and efficiency.
Zhe (Andy) Wang
Assistant Professor
Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Zhe (Andy) Wang earned a PhD in chemistry from Rice University and a bachelor's degree in materials chemistry from Peking University. Prior to joining the College of Engineering, he completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University. His research interests are in the broad areas of advanced materials discovery and sustainable energy. His research focuses on high-throughput catalyst discovery for energy transformation and storage, electrochemical reactor design optimization, and sustainable technologies for green chemical manufacturing and water purification. He is also working with colleagues to combine computational methods and AI with experimental techniques to accelerate the development of novel materials.
Xin Zan
Assistant Professor
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Xin Zan earned a PhD in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Florida in 2024 after receiving a master’s degree in statistics from the University of Florida in 2022 and a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, in 2019. Zan's research interests are focused on advanced data analytics for complex system modeling, monitoring, and diagnosis to improve system performance. Her research leads to immediate applications in areas such as healthcare, manufacturing, and service systems, and her research works have had a broad impact and have been recognized by distinguished awards from INFORMS, IISE, COVID Information Commons (CIC), etc. She is a member of INFORMS and IISE.
Guanqiang (Tim) Zhou
Assistant Professor of Instruction
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Guanqiang (Tim) Zhou earned a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2024. He received a master's degree in communication and information systems in 2018 and a bachelor's degree in electronics and information engineering in 2015, both from Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, China. His research interests include statistical signal processing, convex optimization theory, and distributed machine learning. He is passionate about getting to know other people’s stories and finding the best in others.