Six new faculty join the aerospace and ocean engineering department

As student demand and undergraduate enrollment numbers continue to skyrocket, the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering has announced six new faculty members hired in 2024.

To better serve the growing student population and expand the scope of research expertise in key areas such as vehicle design, space science engineering, hypersonics, artificial intelligence/machine learning and structures and materials, the department has appointed the following new faculty:

Ben Davoudi

Ben Davoudi has joined the department as a collegiate professor. He most recently served as a research fellow at the University of Michigan in the Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering and Aerospace Engineering departments. 

Davoudi’s research is focused on autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS), navigation and guidance in extreme weather conditions, flight simulation and trajectory planning, aeromechanics, drone pesticide applications, aeroacoustics and environmental characteristics of flight vehicles, complex physical systems modeling, distributed propulsion systems, CFD, computer vision.

He completed his Ph.D. and master's in aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan.

Bradley Denby

Bradley Denby has been appointed as an assistant professor in the department. A recent graduate from Carnegie Mellon University, Denby works at the intersection of computer systems and space systems. His research centers around enabling edge computing for satellites in orbit, specifically focusing on autonomous systems, machine learning/artificial intelligence, and cyber-physical systems and edge computing.

He completed his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Before that, he worked as a civilian research engineer at the Autonomy and Navigation Technology (ANT) Center in the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), where he completed his MS in computer engineering. As an undergraduate, he studied physics, mathematics, and computer science.

Liselle Joseph

Liselle Joseph joined the department in December 2023 as an assistant professor. She holds a joint appointment with the aerospace and ocean engineering department and the Virginia Tech National Security Institute. Joseph has significant experience in hypersonic phenomenology, turbulence and hypersonic electromagnetic signature modeling. She also has a strong background in wind tunnel experiments, instrumentation development and system design, and compressor rig testing.

She joined the department after spending several years in industry, as a senior scientist for Spectral Sciences, Inc. Joseph is a three-time Hokie, earning her bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Virginia Tech. 

She is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics.

Darshan Sarojini

Darshan Sarojini has joined as an assistant professor in the department. He is a graduate from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and most recently served as a postdoctoral scholar at the Large Scale Design Optimization Lab at the University of California, San Diego. Sarojini’s research interests include multidisciplinary design optimization, probabilistic and robust design, multiphysics topology optimization, and high-performance computing. He is leading the aircraft design section of the department’s senior capstone design course this academic year.

Sarojini completed his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a focus on structural analysis and optimization of aircraft wings through dimensional reduction. He holds a master’s in computational science and engineering, and a master’s in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from the B.M.S. College of Engineering in Bangalore, India. 

Sarojini is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Sourav Saha

Sourav Saha has joined the department as an assistant professor. He recently earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Northwestern University and specializes in mechanistic computational intelligence, computational mechanics, computational nanomaterials and bioinformatics. 

Prior to joining Northwestern, Saha completed a master’s and bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). He is currently a member of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics(AIAA), U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS). He served as a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at BUET. 

Dr. Saha has published 35 scientific articles in peer reviewed journals and has 4 patent applications. He is a listed reviewer of several prestigious journals in his field including Computational Mechanics and Journal of Computational Physics. Moreover, his dissertation research has helped form an Illinois-based start-up company HIDENN-AI, LLC. 

Dr. Saha has received several awards for his scientific contributions including Richter Memorial Fellowship, Cabell Fellowship, NSF Intern Award, NIST AM Bech 2022 winner award, and travel fellowships.

Maitreyee Sharma Priyadarshini

Maitreyee Sharma Priyadarshini has been appointed as assistant professor. Upon earning her doctoral degree from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, she served two years as a postdoctoral research associate at Johns Hopkins University in the department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Priyadarshini’s research expertise includes hypersonics, physics-informed and data-driven modeling of chemically reacting flows, machine learning and computational materials discovery. 

She completed her Ph.D. and master’s in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and her bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from People’s Education Society Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India. 

Priyadarshini is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the American Chemical Society.