For being “leading experts in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine,” the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE) is welcoming four faculty from UConn’s College of Engineering (CoE) into its membership.
They are among 12 inductees from UConn, and 36 statewide. The new members will be introduced at the Academy’s 50th Annual Dinner on May 28 at UConn.
Election to CASE is open to scientists and engineers who work or live in Connecticut based on scientific distinction achieved through significant original contributions in theory or applications, unusual accomplishments in the pioneering of new and developing fields of applied science and technology, or both.
The 2025 CASE inductees from the CoE include:
• Omer Khan, professor of electrical and computer engineering
• Ji-Cheng “JC” Zhao, dean of the College of Engineering; professor of materials science and engineering
• Guoan Zheng, Collins Aerospace Professor of Engineering Innovation in the Department of Biomedical Engineering; and director of the UConn Center for Biomedical and Bioengineering Innovation
• Xiao-Dong Zhou, Connecticut Clean Energy Fund Professor in Sustainable Energy; the Nicholas E. Madonna Chair in Sustainability; director of the Center for Clean Energy Engineering; and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, materials science and engineering, and mechanical engineering
“CASE is honored to have these outstanding scientists and engineers join us as we seek to fulfill our mission to provide evidence-based advice to inform policy and promote innovation in Connecticut,” says CASE President Amy Howell.
Brief bios of the 2025 CASE Fellows are below:
Omer Khan leads the Computer Architecture Group (CAG) and serves as an associate director of the Connecticut Advanced Computing Center (CACC). His research interests include computer architectures and methods that exploit parallelism, locality, resiliency, and privacy suitable for high-performance applications, such as graph intelligence problems. He has contributed architectural advancements for futuristic massively parallel microprocessors that substantially enhance system level performance and efficiency.
Most recently, Khan and his colleagues took a hardware-architecture-algorithm approach to develop a new system architecture that helps optimize multiple goals at once, like finding the best trade-off between speed and fuel efficiency for autonomous vehicles. They propose Ordered Parallel Multi-Objective Search, or OPMOS, that exploits massive parallelism to achieve huge improvements in performance.
“OPMOS is a unique approach that brings together algorithmic optimizations and architectural insights to rapidly accelerate these computationally hard multi-objective graph intelligence problems,” Khan explains. “This means exact solutions that used to take hours to generate can be found in seconds. This allows decision-makers to have access to real-time information, leading to better decision-making in high-impact application scenarios.”
As a complementary research effort, Khan is addressing the computational complexity problem in artificial intelligence applications, such as autonomous systems, social influence, and chip design that must handle increasingly large and sparse graph-based data.
“Efficient processing of sparse graph problems is extremely challenging since the underlying computations require complex mathematical operations whose processing suffers from performance scaling challenges on existing hardware processing units,” Khan explains. Khan and his colleagues are developing parallel hardware architectures that exploit sparsity for performance to reduce computational complexity without compromising accuracy.
Prior to joining UConn, Khan spent several years in the semiconductor industry as a high-performance processor architect.
Khan has a BS in electrical and computer engineering from Michigan State University (2000) and a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2009).
Ji-Cheng “JC” Zhao is an expert on design of advanced alloys and coatings, additive manufacturing (3D printing) of alloys and composites, high-throughput materials science methodologies, and computational thermodynamics and kinetics. He previously served as a director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy), managing approximately $100 million in projects to develop energy-efficient and green technologies.
Before working in academia and government, Zhao was a senior materials scientist and project leader at General Electric (GE) Research Center where he invented new materials and processes, mostly for gas turbines and jet engines, leading to 48 U.S. patents.
As dean of engineering at UConn, Zhao is working to expand the College’s research footprint, launch impactful educational programs, and advance relationships with local, national, and international partners.
Zhao is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Inventors, ASM International, the Materials Research Society, and the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society.
Zhao has a BS in materials science and engineering from Central South University in Hunan, China (1985) and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Lehigh University (1995).
Guoan Zheng is an expert on biomedical optics and instrumentation, computational imaging, microscopy, and chip-scale imaging. At UConn’s Smart Imaging Laboratory, he leads a team of researchers who are developing a new technique called Synthetic Aperture Ptycho-Endoscopy (SAPE), which achieves outstanding resolution and visibility in endoscopic images. Since its inception in 2013, the laboratory has been supported by NSF, NIH, DOE, Connecticut Innovations, and partnerships with multiple industry leaders.
Zheng is also the inventor of Fourier ptychography, a transformative microscopy technique that has become a global standard, now widely adopted across numerous laboratories worldwide. The technique is featured as a chapter in the most widely read textbook on Fourier optics.
He’s also a member of Optica and SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
Zheng holds a BS in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University (2007); and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology (2013).
Xiao-Dong Zhou is passionate about reducing greenhouse gas emissions through the development of advanced materials and innovative, efficient processes. He’s an expert on nonequilibrium thermodynamics, electrochemistry, thermodynamics and electrochemistry in fuel cells, electrolyzers, and batteries, and studies ways small molecules—such as oxygen, water, carbon dioxide and methane—can be used to create value-added commodities.
At UConn, Zhou serves as a special advisor on sustainable energies to President Radenka Maric and Vice President for Research Pamir Alpay. In this role, he provides guidance and contributes to the development of sustainable energy strategies and initiatives across the university.
Zhou currently serves as the technical editor of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society, and an associate editor of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society and the International Journal of Ceramic Engineering and Science. Since 2017, Zhou has secured more than $23 million in grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Department of Energy.
Zhou received his BS in chemical engineering from East China University of Science and Technology and his Ph.D. in ceramic engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla.
In 2012, CASE elected Pamir Alpay, vice president for research, innovation, and entrepreneurship and professor of materials science and engineering to its membership. He’s among 20 engineering faculty from UConn—including the four new inductees—who are CASE members.
“We’re thrilled to have Professors Zhao, Zheng, Khan, and Zhou join our membership at the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering,” Alpay says. “This achievement is a testament to their contributions to research and innovation, and their dedication to advancing knowledge in engineering fields. Their work continues to inspire excellence within our academic community at the CoE.”
The CoE faculty are among 12 newly elected CASE members at UConn. One third of all new inductees statewide are UConn faculty. Others 2025 inductees include:
• Gerald Berkowitz, professor of horticulture, University of Connecticut College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources
• Ming-Hui Chen, department head of statistics; Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, University of Connecticut College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
• Jie He, professor of chemistry, University of Connecticut College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
• Guozhen Lu, professor of mathematics; director of Mathematical Sciences Research Collaboratory, University of Connecticut College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
• Xiuling Lu, professor of pharmaceutical sciences; associate director of the Kildsig Center for Pharmaceutical Processing Research, University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy
• Vijay Rathinam, professor of immunology, University of Connecticut Health Center School of Medicine
• Kumar Venkitanarayanan, professor of animal science; associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies, University of Connecticut College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources
• Jing Zhao, professor of chemistry, University of Connecticut College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
UConn Engineering continues to have a strong presence in CASE membership. Khan, Zhao, Zheng, and Zhou join 16 other faculty from the College of Engineering who are already members of CASE.
CASE was chartered by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1976 to provide expert guidance on science and technology to the people and to the state of Connecticut, and to promote the application of science and technology to human welfare and economic well-being.
For more information about CASE, visit https://ctcase.org.
