Lassonde School of Engineering Welcomes Five New Faculty Members

This article originally appeared in YFile.

The Lassonde School of Engineering is welcoming five new faculty members this fall: Amirali Amirsoleimani, Alvine Boaye Belle, Konstantinos Derpanis, Jennifer Tsai and Larry Zhang.

“I am pleased to welcome five new faculty members to the Lassonde community this year,” said Jane Goodyer, dean, Lassonde School of Engineering. “As a school, we are committed to creating positive change for our students, our communities and the world around us, and our new faculty members will help propel us forward by educating our future engineers and scientists and pursuing impactful research. We value the different backgrounds and experiences that professors Amirsoleimani, Boaye Belle, Derpanis, Tsai and Zhang will bring as they support us in solving complex, real-world issues on a global scale.”

Amirali Amirsoleimani

Amirali Amirsoleimani is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Lassonde School of Engineering. He received his PhD in electrical and computer engineering (ECE) from University of Windsor in December 2017 and completed his postdoctoral research fellowship at the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Toronto in July 2021. His current research interests include application-specific processing units, in-memory computing, neuromorphic hardware design and RRAM-based accelerators for artificial intelligence. He received IEEE Larry K. Wilson award for IEEE region 7 in 2016. He was also the recipient of a best poster honourable mention award at International Joint Conference on Neural Network (IJCNN) 2017 in Alaska, USA. He is a guest editor in Frontiers in Electronics and Frontiers in Nanotechnology journals and is also serving as a reviewer for several electrical and computer engineering journals including IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I (TCASI), TCAS II, TNANO, TVLSI, TED, Frontiers in Neuro-Science, Microelectronics journal, Neural Computing and Applications.

Alvine Boaye Belle

Alvine Boaye Belle is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Lassonde School of Engineering. She holds a PhD in software engineering from the University of Quebec (Ecole de Technologie Supérieure). She has completed a 2-year industrial postdoctoral in software engineering at the University of Ottawa under the supervision of Professor Timothy Lethbridge. After completing her postdoctoral, she worked for the federal public service while completing a graduate diploma in public administration and governance at McGill University. Her previous research focused on software maintenance and evolution, optimization, system assurance, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Her current research focuses on the assurance of intelligent software systems throughout their lifecycle. She speaks both French and English. Dr. Boaye Belle is also a mother, and she is very passionate about poetry, winning several poetry contests.

Konstantinos Derpanis

Kosta Derpanis joins Lassonde as an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Kosta received an Honours Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in computer science from the University of Toronto in 2000, an MSc (supervised by Professor John Tsotsos and Professor Richard Wildes) and a PhD (supervised by Professor Richard Wildes) in computer science from York University in 2003 and 2010, respectively. For his dissertation work, he received the Canadian Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Society (CIPPRS) Doctoral Dissertation Award 2010 Honourable Mention. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the GRASP Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Professor Kostas Daniilidis. In 2012, he joined the Department of Computer Science at Ryerson University as an associate professor. He serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI). This year he is serving as an Area Chair (AC) for AAAI 2021, ICRA 2021, CVPR 2021 and ICCV 2021. His main research field of interest is computer vision with emphasis on motion analysis and human motion understanding and related aspects in image processing and machine learning (e.g., deep learning).

Jennifer Tsai

Jennifer Tsai joins Lassonde as a sessional assistant professor in the Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering. Dr. Tsai is trained in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. She holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from McMaster University, an MSc in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Washington and a BSc in Aerospace Engineering from National Chung Kung University, Taiwan. Her research background includes waterjet dissector design, emission of pulsed combustion and elastomeric material design. She also has intensive experience in computational fluid dynamics and material modelling as well as machine learning. She has several years of industrial experience as a computational analysis engineer working on thermal solutions for desktop computers, TVs and data centres, the aerodynamic performance of automobiles and their HVAC system, the performance of impellers in incubators, and contaminant predictions through machine learning. She performed numerical analysis to assist product design in the development stage. She also assisted related experiments, such as in-house thermal measurements and wind tunnel tests. Dr. Tsai has a passion for engineering education and received several certificates including Teaching and Learning Scholar and Foundations Certificates of Completion and Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) Certificates. Her current research interests include fluid-structure interactions, micro aerial vehicles under harsh environments, energy harvesting and open educational resources.

Larry Zhang

Larry Yueli Zhang is an assistant professor, teaching stream in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Lassonde School of Engineering. His teaching and research interests include data structures, algorithms, computer organization, operating systems, computer networks, distributed systems, social network analysis and computing education. Prior to joining York University, Larry completed his PhD at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto and served as a teaching faculty member at the Department of Mathematical and Computational Sciences at the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus.