College Names New Associate and Assistant Deans

by Cheryl Halle | Tuesday, Aug 21, 2018
College Names New Associate and Assistant Deans

The FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science, Dean Stella Batalama is pleased to announce an expansion of the college leadership team with the appointments of Frederick Bloetscher, associate dean for undergraduate studies and community outreach; Mihaela Cardei, associate dean for graduate studies; Javad Hashemi, associate dean for research; Shihong Huang, associate dean for faculty affairs, equity and inclusion;and, Paul Scarpinato, assistant dean, lab operations and engineering technology.

Frederick Bloetscher

Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and Community Outreach and Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering

Frederick Bloetscher, Ph.D., P.E. has been promoted to the associate dean for undergraduate studies and community outreach after serving 13 years as a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering at FAU.

Bloetscher earned his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Miami; an M.S. in public administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and a B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Cincinnati.

Bloetscher’s areas of expertise include water resource management issues and utility management. He has written more than 200 conference papers, published more than 30 peer reviewed papers, given hundreds of presentations at conferences and other events, and authored 10 books. Among numerous local and national awards, Bloetscher is the recipient of the 2018 Presidential Award for Community Engagement at FAU, the 2017 Engineering Educator of the Year Award, and the recipient of the 2012 NCEES Award for the collaboration with students and professionals in the building of the Dania Beach, Fla. nanofiltration plant. The water treatment plant is the first LEED® - Gold certified water plant in the world, and has received four national awards, two state awards and one local design award.

Mihaela Cardei

Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, and Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Mihaela Cardei, Ph.D. has been promoted to the associate dean for graduate studies after serving as a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (CEECS) in the College. Cardei served as the director of CEECS graduate studies, 2014 to 2018 and as the chair of the College's graduate programs committee, academic year 2017-18.

Cardei received her M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Her research interests are in the areas of wireless networking, wireless sensor networks, combinatorial optimization, and designing networking algorithms and protocols. She has published more than 95 publications with over 7,000 citations on Google Scholar and has received three Best Paper awards. Cardei has supervised to completion seven Ph.D. dissertations and nine M.S. theses. She is a recipient of the NSF Career Award in 2006 and received the FAU Researcher of the Year Award in 2006-07.

Javad Hashemi

Associate Dean for Research, Interim Chair and Professor in the Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering

Javad Hashemi, Ph.D. has been promoted to the associate dean for research after serving as the chair of the Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering in the College.

Hashemi earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Drexel University.

Hashemi’s areas of specialization are in mechanics, biomechanics, and materials. He has more than 25 years of experience in research and education in various areas of the mechanical engineering discipline including metal forming, high strain rate phenomena, high pressure loading of materials, synthesis of materials, biomaterials, and biomechanics. He has taught and developed numerous courses and laboratories at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Hashemi is the co-author of an undergraduate textbook on “Foundations of Materials Science and Engineering” and has published over 100 articles in journals and conference proceedings with over 3,000 citations.

Shihong Huang

Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Equity and Inclusion, and Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Shihong Huang, has been promoted to the associate dean for faculty affairs, equity and inclusion after serving 14 years as a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (CEECS) in the College.

Huang received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of California, Riverside. Her research is broadly in software engineering and specifically in self-adaptive systems and brain-computer interaction (BCI) in software engineering, where she studies symbiotic partnership between humans and systems. Her research interests also include health informatics, and computer applications in clinical and therapeutic fields. Her work on nursing knowledge management was granted a U.S. Patent in 2014 and later acquired by a major international company. She was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors, FAU Chapter in 2018. She is a twice recipient of the FAU award for Excellence and innovation in Undergraduate Teaching (2008 and 2015). She was the General Chair of the 24th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (SIGDOC 2006) and the Program Co-Chair of the 9th IEEE International Symposium on Web Site Evolution (WSE 2007). She is a core contributor to the 2014 OMG standard “Essence—Kernel and Language for Software Engineering Methods.”

Paul Scarpinato

Assistant Dean, Lab Operations and Engineering Technology

Paul Scarpinato joins the FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science as the assistant dean, lab operations and engineering technology.

Scarpinato earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an M.A.E. in engineering management from Georgia Southern University.

Scarpinato has more than 25 years of industry and higher ed experience in the field of mechanical engineering. His experience includes expertise in the areas of biomedical, design, manufacturing, field, and sustaining engineering.