Four Professors Receive Assistant Tenure Track Faculty Career Development Award

Weijian Diao, PhD
Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Dr. Diao’s research focuses on heterogeneous catalysis, especially rational catalyst synthesis and application for renewable chemical production. In his work, he synthesizes nanostructured metal-metal and metal-metal oxide catalysts with unique composition and morphology for hydrocarbon conversion, CO₂ utilization and renewable energy.

“With the Assistant Tenure Track Faculty Career Development Award, I am able to build a mentor-mentee relation with a senior faculty outside Villanova who is a well-known expert in catalysis field,” Dr. Diao says. “We have met several times this year in person and online to discuss potential collaboration and joint proposals.”

“Another benefit of the program is that it supports me to attend national meetings in catalysis research area such as Gordon Research Conference,” he adds. “I was able to meet with and build connections with faculty from other institutions and experts from industrial companies. I also discussed with [National Science Foundation] program manager during the meeting about catalysis research at Villanova and future potential proposals to NSF.”

Jonathan Hubler, PhD
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Dr. Hubler’s research focuses on geotechnical aspects of natural hazards. Specifically, his research group has been evaluating soil behavior during earthquake events and the impacts of extreme events on infrastructure performance.

“The Assistant Tenure Track Faculty Career Development Award enabled me to travel to the University of Washington during spring 2022 to develop new research collaborations with researchers at the NSF Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) RAPID facility,” Dr. Hubler says. “I worked with a collaborator to devise a research plan to collect data using seismometers available at the RAPID facility and completed the measurements during the month-long visit. The preliminary data has shown promising results and has led to the submission of several research proposals and the opportunity to co-advise an NSF REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) student at the University of Washington/NSF RAPID center this summer.”

“The greatest benefit was the ability to travel for one month to build connections with collaborators in geotechnical engineering and natural hazards research, learn about new research equipment, and deploy the equipment to collect data for proposals and manuscripts,” he adds.

Xun Jiao, PhD
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dr. Jiao’s research is to develop robust and efficient computing systems for intelligent algorithms such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). This has a broad range of application fields such as smart health care, green environment and autonomous systems.

Dr. Jiao calls the fellowship a “great help! This helped me connect with several senior faculty and researchers in my field. There are already multiple papers being published and conferences sessions being organized as a result of this grant. It will also help me get further in executing several just-funded NSF projects.”

Among the biggest benefits of the program, he says, is it “provides a platform to make connections with colleagues and researchers in other institutions.”