The Department of Materials Science and Engineering welcomed Assistant Professor Margarita Herrera-Alonso in January 2010. Herrera-Alonso received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was previously a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University and at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Herrera-Alonso’s research focuses on the use of functional polymers to tailor the surface properties of self-assembled constructs and to generate stimuli-responsive materials exhibiting novel properties.

Feilim Mac Gabhann, who received his PhD in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins in 2006, returned to Homewood this fall as an assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the Institute for Computational Medicine. His research focuses on experimental-computational approaches to generating novel therapeutic strategies to major human diseases, including cancer, peripheral artery disease, and HIV.

Professor Rajat Mittal joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering this fall. A world-renowned expert in areas that include computational fluid dynamics, turbomachinery flows, and biofluid dynamics, Mittal came to Johns Hopkins from George Washington University where he was a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Sridevi V. Sarma, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, joined the Institute for Computational Medicine this fall. A graduate of MIT, Sarma’s research interests include control of constrained and defective systems and large-scale optimization.

This fall, Youseph Yazdi was appointed director of WSE’s new Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design (CBID) and assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Yazdi, who received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, served previously as corporate director in the Corporate Office of Science and Technology at Johnson & Johnson.