Three CSE faculty named McKnight Land-Grant Professors

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (01/27/2016) – Three College of Science and Engineering faculty members are among eight recipients of the 2016-18 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, a program designed to advance the careers of the most promising junior faculty members who are at the beginning stages of their professional careers.

Each recipient will receive a research grant of $25,000 in each year of the two-year appointment, to be used for expenditures related to the recipient’s research and scholarly activities. In addition, each professor is awarded either a year’s leave to pursue research during the second year of the award or a supplementary research grant.

The new McKnight Land-Grant Professors and their research are:

Assistant professor Xiang Cheng (chemical engineering and materials science)

Soft materials are a broad class of condensed matter, which has important technological applications and forms the basis of most biological systems. Cheng studies the physics of soft materials in experiments, with a special emphasis on the flow behaviors of particle suspensions and polymeric fluids. Using state-of-the-art imaging techniques, including confocal microscopy, high-speed photography and holography, he investigates the structural origin of soft material flows and aims to design complex fluids with controllable fluid properties.

Assistant professor Jiarong Hong (mechanical engineering)

Fluid flow phenomena occur over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales across different disciplines in science and engineering. However, current flow diagnostic tools are insufficient to provide key measurements needed to address a number of basic problems in the field of fluid dynamics. Hong’s research focuses on developing innovative flow imaging techniques to understand the fundamental physics involved in complex fluid behaviors for practical applications in renewable energy and high speed transportation.

Assistant professor William C. K. Pomerantz (chemistry)

The Pomerantz lab seeks to perturb the physical interaction between proteins, termed transcription factors, by designing small drug-like molecules. These interactions dictate the information flow inside cells that can ultimately lead to disease. Given that transcription factors represent a major class of potential drug targets, the new approaches using fluorine, a unique element on the periodic table, could significantly increase the repertoire of drug targets opening up new avenues for drug/probe discovery.

Additional University of Minnesota faculty receiving McKnight Land-Grant Professorships for 2016-18 are: