Pigman College of Engineering welcomes 8 new faculty members

The University of Kentucky Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering is proud to welcome eight new members to its faculty this fall.

James Caudill, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Caudill earned his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2019 and most recently has served as principal research scientist in the Institute for Sustainable Manufacturing and executive director of the Next Generation Additive Manufacturing Research Laboratory. His research interests are: 

• Solid-State & Fusion-Based Additive Manufacturing
• Lunar Manufacturing & In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU)
• Multifunctional Materials
• Physics-Based & Data-Driven Modeling
• Autonomous & Agentic Manufacturing
• Expeditionary Manufacturing
• Sustainable Manufacturing & Feedstock Upcycling

Michael Chen, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Department of Computer Science 

Chen earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2023 and most recently served as an independent postdoctoral fellow at New York University's Simons Center for Computational Physical Chemistry.  His research interests are: 

• Theoretical and Computational Chemistry
• Quantum Effects in Molecular and Materials Systems
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
• Vibrational and Electronic Spectroscopies
• Electrochemistry and Charge Transport
• Colloidal Self-Assembly

Amaya Jayasinghe, lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Jayasinghe earned her Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University in 2026 and most recently served as a doctoral research fellow at Southern Illinois University.  Her research interests are: 

• Multiple access techniques
• Massive MIMO systems
• Intelligent reflective surfaces
• Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC)
• Cell-free communication systems

Cemantha Johnson, lecturer in the  F. Joseph Halcomb III, M.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering

Johnson earned her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 2023 and most recently served as assistant professor, non-tenure track at Case Western Reserve University.  Her research interests are: 

• Cardiac arrhythmia mechanisms
• Biomedical engineering education

Rohan "Reddy" Kalavakonda, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Kalavakonda earned his Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2026 and most recently served as an ngineering consultant for Resonance Signatures, LLC. His research interests are: 

• Edge Intelligence & Wearables: Hardware/Software co-design of modular, private, and energyefficient architectures for medical IoT (e.g., "Pasteables") and custom platforms for workforce 
  development.
• Autonomous Bio-Hybrid Systems: Integration of AI with biological organisms for precision 
  agriculture and environmental sensing.
• Emerging Computing Technologies (Biocomputing): Establishment of architectural standards 
  and EDA flows for post-silicon computing with biological substrates (DNA to organisms).

Yanan Pan, assistant professor in the Department of Mining Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering

Pan earned her Ph.D. from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in 2026 and most recently served as a graduate research assistant at Virginia Tech. Her research interests are: 

• Critical Mineral Extraction and Processing
• Selective Separation and Recovery
• Extractive Metallurgy and Metal Refining
• Advanced Functional Materials
• Sustainable Resource Recovery
• Carbon Mineralization

Elinor Rubin-McGregor, lecturer in the Department of Computer Science 

Rubin-McGregor earned her Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2026 and most recently served as an instructor in the Department of Computer Science. 

Boyuan Zhang, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science 

Zhang earned his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 2026 and most recently served as a research scientist intern at ByteDance. His research interests are: 

• High-Performance Computing (HPC): Design and optimization of scalable systems for scientific and engineering workloads, with a focus on efficiency and parallel performance.
• Data Compression: Development of GPU-based lossy and lossless compression algorithms for scientific data and machine learning workloads, emphasizing fidelity, throughput, and scalability.
• Quantum Computing: Exploration of high-performance methods for large-scale quantum circuit simulation and quantum system modeling, addressing memory and scalability challenges.
• Machine Learning Systems: System-level optimizations for training and inference, including model compression, memory footprint reduction, and GPU-accelerated data pipelines.