By Wayne Gillam / UW ECE News
Incoming UW ECE faculty are (from left to right, clockwise): Ang Li, Yiyue Luo, Dinuka Sahabandu, Vasileios Charisopoulos, Banghua Zhu, Jing Yu. Photo collage by Isaiah Hoagland / UW ECE
Beginning this fall and extending through autumn quarter 2025, UW ECE is welcoming six new faculty members who will bring a wide breadth of knowledge and technical expertise to the Department. Each of these outstanding new hires are making significant contributions to their respective fields, and they are pushing technology development forward in exciting, innovative ways. With these new additions, the Department will be adding faculty expertise in computer architecture, reconfigurable integrated systems, data science, and creative applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning to areas such as power and energy systems, cybersecurity, and intelligent textiles.
“I am excited to welcome these new faculty members to the Department,” said UW ECE Professor and Chair Eric Klavins. “Each is at the leading edge of their field and brings knowledge and unique skills that are sure to benefit our students, research efforts, and collaborations across the University.”
Ang Li
This month, Ang Li will become a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department. He is currently a UW ECE affiliate assistant professor and a visiting postdoctoral scholar for AMD, where he works with state-of-the-art microprocessors.
“I’m excited to join UW ECE and start my academic career,” Li said. “I’m looking forward to collaborating with the Department’s leading researchers across many disciplines and working with smart and hard-working students with diverse backgrounds.”
Li received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University and his master’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University, where he also received his doctoral degree in electrical and computer engineering. At the UW, Li will direct the PN Computer Engineering Lab, which will focus on innovating a variety of different devices ranging from computing systems to semiconductor circuits. The lab will also explore the interplay between classic and emerging computing technologies.
In his doctoral research, Li developed a silicon-proven, open-source field programmable gate array, or FPGA, research and prototyping framework called the Princeton Reconfigurable Gate Array, or PRGA. He also studied tightly integrated, manycore-eFPGA, system-on-chip, or SoC, architectures. He has been a leading member in two multi-university teams who successfully developed two silicon prototypes, including a 2.2 billion-transistor, Linux-capable, fully cache-coherent, manycore-accelerator-eFPGA SoC, which is one of the biggest academic tape-outs of its kind to date.
Yiyue Luo
Also this month, Yiyue Luo will become a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department. Luo is currently a UW ECE affiliate assistant professor and a research assistant in the Computational Design & Fabrication Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT.
“I’m thrilled to be joining UW ECE! I look forward to joining this vibrant, multidisciplinary, and collaborative community,” Luo said. “The extensive resources in digital fabrication, world-class education and research programs, and the opportunity to work alongside incredible researchers with a wide range of expertise make the UW a perfect place for me!”
Luo received her bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign before going on to earn her master’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT, where she also received her doctoral degree in electrical and electronics engineering.
Her research interests are at the intersection of digital fabrication, human-computer/robot interaction, and applied artificial intelligence. She creates intelligent textiles that incorporate sensors and other technologies into knitted fabrics. Her projects include machine-knitted pneumatic actuators, digitally embroidered smart gloves, machine-knitted haptic textiles, and much more.
Luo’s research has been published in interdisciplinary journals, such as Nature Electronics and Nature Communications; presented at top human-computer interaction, robotics, and learning venues; featured in prominent media outlets; and shown in public museums and World Congress exhibitions. This year, she was listed as one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science, North America.
Dinuka Sahabandu
Dinuka Sahabandu will become an assistant teaching professor in the Department in December 2024. Sahabandu is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Network Security Lab, which is led by UW ECE Professor and former Chair Radha Poovendran. There, Sahabandu works on projects involving machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity.
“I’m excited to join UW ECE and collaborate with its world-class faculty and students, which offers an unparalleled environment for learning and growth,” Sahabandu said. “The opportunity to integrate cutting-edge research from the UW and well-established top-tier industries in the Seattle area into my teaching is a thrilling start to my career as an educator. I’m also looking forward to being part of a diverse and inclusive UW ECE community that fosters innovation and collaboration from all perspectives.”
Sahabandu received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical and electronics engineering from Washington State University and his doctoral degree in electrical and computer engineering from UW ECE.
Sahabandu is an expert at developing scalable machine learning and reinforcement learning algorithms to produce tools and solutions that ensure the security of cyber and physical systems. His doctoral research has been transitioned to high-level stakeholders, such as the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory as well as commercialized by Argus AI under the sponsorship of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
Vasileios Charisopoulos
In September 2025, Vasileios Charisopoulos will become a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department. He is currently a UW ECE affiliate assistant professor and an AI & Science postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago Data Science Institute.
“I am very excited to join UW ECE!” Charisopoulos said. “I think the department is uniquely positioned to produce transformative research given its highly collaborative culture, its representation and leadership in several interdisciplinary research centers across UW, and its ties with industry within the greater Seattle area.”
Charisopoulos received his Diploma in electrical and computer engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. He went on to receive his doctoral degree from Cornell University in operations research and information engineering.
Charisopoulos’ research interests include developing numerical optimization methods for machine learning, signal processing, and scientific computing. His interests encompass the mathematics of data science, with an emphasis on the interplay of optimization, high-dimensional statistical estimation, and numerical linear algebra.
In 2023, Charisopoulos was recognized as a Rising Star in Computational and Data Sciences by the Oden Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. He also received the Cornelia Ye Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from Cornell University in 2021. His other awards and honors include receiving an Andreas G. Leventis Scholarship in 2020, a Schloss-Dagstuhl Support Grant for Junior Researchers in 2018, and a Cornell University Fellowship in 2017.
Jing Yu
Also in September 2025, Jing Yu will become a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department. She is currently a UW ECE affiliate assistant professor and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Michigan. In spring 2025, she will join the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a Grainger College of Engineering Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow.
“I am thrilled to be joining UW ECE and collaborating with its talented and diverse faculty and students!” Yu said. “The vibrant research community here offers incredible opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, making UW ECE an ideal place for cutting-edge research at the intersection of control theory, machine learning, optimization, and sustainable energy systems.”
Yu received her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She went on to earn her doctoral degree in control and dynamical systems from the California Institute of Technology, also known as Caltech.
Yu’s research interests include the interplay between control theory and machine learning, with a focus on online decision-making and distributed algorithms for large-scale sustainable energy systems. She was named an Amazon AI4Science fellow in 2023. She was also the recipient of several awards, including the Best Paper Finalist award in the Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, e-Energy Conference in 2022 and the Caltech Amori Doctoral Prize in 2024.
Banghua Zhu
Banghua Zhu will also become a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department in September 2025. Zhu is currently a UW ECE affiliate assistant professor, and he works at a startup he co-founded, Nexusflow, which leverages cutting-edge research to create generative AI agents for business enterprises.
“I’m excited to join UW ECE and contribute to its world-class research and educational programs,” Zhu said. “The Department’s strong foundation in machine learning, combined with Seattle’s vibrant tech industry, creates an ideal environment for advancing research in language model training, evaluation, and serving. I look forward to collaborating with talented colleagues and students to push the boundaries of AI and large language models, while leveraging the unique opportunities that the UW and the Seattle area offer in bridging academic research with real-world applications.”
Zhu received his bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Tsinghua University and his doctoral degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
His research focuses on improving the efficiency and safety of foundation models, specifically large language models. He is dedicated to creating open-source datasets and tools for public access. His research interests include training and evaluation of language models, game theory, reinforcement learning, human-AI interactions, and machine learning systems. He is a recipient of the 2023 David Sakrison Memorial Prize for outstanding research at the UC Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.
UW ECE would like to thank the faculty search committee, which was chaired in 2023–24 by UW ECE and Allen School Professor Georg Seelig and in 2024–25 by UW ECE and Physics Professor Kai-Mei Fu. The Department appreciates the committee members’ careful reviews, engaged participation, and generous welcome toward the candidates.