April 08, 2008 — Dean Yannis Yortos has announced the appointment of five outstanding members of the appointments went to senior faculty, and three to exceptionally promising junior members.

Professors Joe Qin and Don Zhang will hold the newly created Fluor Professorship in Process Engineering and the Marshall Professorship in Engeneering Technology chairs, respectively.

Joi Qin

Qin, an expert in control systems in chemical engineering, joined USC in the fall of 2007 as a professor in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, with joint appointments in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering and the Dnail J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the DuPont Young Professor Award, a Halliburton/Brown & Root Young Faculty Excellent Award, an NSF-China Outstanding Young Investigator Award, and an IFAC Best Paper Prize for a model predictive control survey paper published in Control Engeneering Practice. Prior to joining USC, he was an associate chair and holder of the Paul D. and Betty Robertson Meek and American Petrofina Foundation Centennial Professorship in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin.

Don Zhang

Zhang, who also joined the Viterbi School in fall of 2007, ia a professor in the Sonny Astani Department of Civel and Environmental Engineering and holds a joint appointment in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engeneering and Materials Science. Previously, he was a senior scientist and team leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He held the Miller Chair at the Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geological Engineering at the University of Oklahoma from 2004 to 2007. Zhang has also served as Chang Jiang (guest chair) Professor at Nanjing University and was the founding associate dean at the College of Engeneering at Peking University in China.

He is an expert in stochastic prtial differential equations and their applications to hydrology, reservoir simulation and the sequestration of carbon dioxide in geological formations as a viable option for mitigating greenhouse gas effects.