9/16/2025 Diya Mehta
The Department of Engineering within The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign congratulates several of its professors on their recent promotions.
Written by Diya Mehta
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is proud to recognize the accomplishments of its faculty members. The following promotions highlight the department’s commitment to excellence in teaching, research and innovation across fields ranging from robotics and quantum information to semiconductors and nanotechnology.
Teaching Associate Professor
Juan Alvarez has been promoted to Teaching Associate Professor. He brings a strong commitment to undergraduate education, teaching courses in probability, digital communications and modern communication systems with Python and software-defined radio. His research interests span applied probability, mathematical modeling of polymers and biophysical systems and strategies for improving student learning and study skills.
Dimitrios Katselis has been promoted to Teaching Associate Professor. He teaches core courses in probability and random processes and has research interests spanning stochastic systems and control, applied probability, system identification, machine learning and signal processing. His academic career includes research appointments at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Complex Dynamic Systems and Control.
Associate Professor
Katherine Driggs-Campbell has been promoted to Associate Professor with indefinite tenure and was also recognized with the 2025 Campus Distinguished Promotion Award. Her research specializes in human-centered autonomy and human-robot interaction, developing safe and interactive autonomous systems for applications ranging from agricultural robotics and autonomous vehicles to collaborative manufacturing. She has also been honored with the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s Early Academic Career Award for her contributions to real-world autonomous systems that interact safely with people.
Saurabh Gupta has been promoted to Associate Professor with indefinite tenure. His research focuses on robotics, computer vision, and artificial intelligence, with particular emphasis on autonomous systems and learning-based robotics. He teaches courses in deep learning, computer vision, and robot learning, preparing students to advance the next generation of intelligent autonomous machines.
Professor
Mohamed Ali Belabbas has been promoted to Professor. His research focuses on nonlinear systems and control, with applications in autonomous systems, robotics, bioelectronics, and cognitive computing. He teaches courses ranging from introductory robotics and control systems to advanced topics such as stochastic and geometric control theory.
Can Bayram has been promoted to Professor. He is an Intel Alumni Endowed Faculty Scholar and leads the Innovative COmpound semiconductoR LABoratory (ICORLAB), where his team develops next-generation semiconductor technologies. His research has advanced cubic GaN for efficient green light emitters, diamond-based devices for high-power electronics, and nanophotonic structures for ultra-high-resolution displays, contributions that are shaping the future of lighting, communications, and energy systems.
Eric Chitambar has been promoted to Professor. His research centers on quantum information science, with contributions to quantum cryptography, information theory, and quantum optics. He has developed and taught foundational courses in quantum systems and information theory at Illinois and currently serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.
Zhen Peng has been promoted to Professor. His research integrates classical, statistical, and quantum electromagnetics to advance next-generation technologies in wireless communication, antennas, and computational modeling. His group develops scalable algorithms and machine learning methods for large-scale electromagnetic simulations, with applications in reconfigurable surfaces, metasystems, and electromagnetic compatibility.
Wenjuan Zhu has been promoted to Professor. Her research focuses on two-dimensional materials, ferroelectric materials, and nanoscale electronic and photonic devices, with applications in flexible electronics and next-generation microelectronics. A recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the AMD Jerry Sanders Faculty Scholar Award, she is widely recognized for her pioneering work in 2D material-based electronics and in-memory computing technologies.