Academics and entrepreneurs from around the world have joined the faculty at the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science for the Fall 2026 semester.
A total of 16 new faculty from Mexico, Colombia, Germany and the U.S. bring a wide range of expertise to six of the college’s seven academic units. This group, which includes industry scientists, research faculty and UCF alumni, specialize in topics such as nuclear engineering, robotic systems, coastal hazards, efficient computation, biomechanics and system optimization.
For the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, two new faculty members are joining the ranks to enhance both the research reputation and quality of education in the department.
Xin Chen
Assistant Professor
Chen is the co-founder of and senior scientist at Equatic, a company that designs and commissions carbon removal facilities that use electrolyzed seawater to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral scholar and research engineer at the University of California, Los Angeles. He earned his doctoral degree in materials engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a master’s degree in materials science from the Illinois Institute of Technology. His research areas focuses on electrochemical materials, methods and systems.
Sunny Gupta
Assistant Professor
Gupta earned his B.S. and M.S. in Physics, with a minor in Materials, from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Nanoengineering from Rice University. He conducted postdoctoral research at University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and later served as a Research Scientist at Rice University. His research is centered on employing and developing theoretical and computational approaches for discovering new emergent quantum behavior in 2D materials, revealing their synthesis pathways, and ultimately integrate the novel electronic and spin transport phenomena into next-generation devices.