Pigman College of Engineering welcomes 7 new faculty members

This month, the University of Kentucky Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering welcomed seven new members to its faculty. 

Brooks Lane, assistant professor in the  F. Joseph Halcomb III, M.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering

Lane earned his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 2019 and most recently served as a postdoctoral fellow at Drexel University.  His research interests are: 

• Biomechanics and mechanobiology in aortopathies and cardiac valves in health and disease
• Percutaneous endovascular interventions and post-intervention restenosis mechanisms
• Inflammation-mediated mechanisms in cardiovascular disease
• Local optical approaches for measurement of motion, displacement, and deformation

Weibing Gong, assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering

Gong earned his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 2023 and most recently served as an assistant professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology. His research interests are: 

• Geohazards (Slope stability and landslides)
• Geosystem resilience
• AI and remote sensing applications in geotechnical engineering
• Geomechanics and foundation engineering
• Carbon detection and capture
• Geoenergy storage and extraction

Ruiquan Huang, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science

Huang earned his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) in 2025 and most recently served as an instructor in Cornerstone Engineering Design at PSU. 

Karla Rincon-Martinez, assistant professor in the Fujio Cho Department of Engineering Technology, Paducah Campus

Rincon-Martinez earned her Ph.D. from CINVESTAV, Mexico in 2022 and most recently served as adjunct faculty at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico. Her research interests are:

• Robotics (bipedal locomotion, exoskeletons, assistive devices)
• Reinforcement Learning for Control Systems
• Medical and Rehabilitation Robotics
• Human-Machine Interfaces
• Mechatronic System Design

Muhammad Hashir Syed, assistant professor in the Fujio Cho Department of Engineering Technology

Syed earned his Ph.D. from Southern Methodist University in 2024 and most recently served as a visiting assistant professor at Sam Houston State University. His research interests are: 

• UAV-Enabled Wireless Communications
• Aerial-Ground-Underground Channel Modeling
• Agricultural Internet of Things
• Optimization

Stephen Vicchio, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Paducah Campus

Vicchio earned his Ph.D. from Clemson University in 2023 and most recently served as a postdoctoral fellow at Savannah River National Laboratory. His research interests are: 

• Catalysis and Reaction Engineering
• Sustainability and Energy
• Computing and Simulation

Mengkun Yang, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science

Yang earned her Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2006 and most recently served as a professor at Eastern Kentucky University. Her research interests are: 

• Distributed systems
• Mobile computing
• Cybersecurity