Tenure and Promotions: June 2026

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In June, the University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees approved appointments with tenure for Professor Christopher Davis of the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department and the Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences and Associate Professor Chao Zhao of the Biomedical Engineering (BME) and the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) Departments. 

In addition, the trustees promoted six faculty to the status of associate professor with tenure: Fatima Anwar of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department; Chase Cornelison of BME; Jeremy Gummeson of ECE; Meghan Huber of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department; Olufolajimi (Jimi) Oke of CEE; and Anuj Pradhan of MIE.

Davis, who joined the UMass faculty in 2026, is the Paros Chair of Atmospheric Research and Hazard Mitigation and the director of the UMass Amherst Paros Center for Atmospheric Research (PCAR). PCAR addresses the interconnected challenges presented by climate change, shifting weather patterns, aging infrastructure, and social vulnerability. The mission of PCAR is to translate atmospheric research into improved hazardous-weather predictions and information systems that result in societal benefits. Prior to arriving at UMass Amherst, Davis was a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), a role he had held since 1990. Among other positions at NCAR, he has served as director of NCAR’s Advanced Study Program, associate director of for the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Laboratory, and senior advisor to the NCAR director.

Zhao joined UMass Amherst as an associate professor in August of 2025. The Zhao Lab develops polymeric biomaterials, drug-delivery systems, tissue engineering, and medical devices for disease treatment and other biomedical applications. As he explains, “The projects are driven by developing new technologies for the treatment of specific diseases, polymeric vectors for gene therapy, and biomimetic scaffolds to enhance tissue regeneration. The lab’s research integrates polymer chemistry, nanomedicine, and tissue engineering, with a particular focus on non-opioid alternatives for pain management and gene-therapy vectors for targeted delivery.” Zhao received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Akron, his M.S. from Zhejiang University in China, and his B.E. from Harbin Institute of Technology in China. Zhao was also a postdoctoral associate at the University of Michigan, Harvard Medical School, and MIT.

Anwar’s multidisciplinary research focuses on human-centered, safety-first systems for the distributed edge. She focuses on emerging embedded technologies, cyber-physical-systems security, distributed learning for the edge, and human-centered computing. She says her EMTECH Lab is dedicated to advancing embedded systems, AI at the edge, and resilient computing architectures, and her lab also designs networked embedded systems that safely interact with the physical world. Anwar explains that “We are committed to building open-source hardware and software artifacts that promote transparency and innovation. Our research is driven by a foundation of work ethic, diversity, and passion for impactful engineering.” Among Anwar’s many honors is the prestigious NSF CAREER Award. She earned her Ph.D. from UCLA and her B.S. at the University of Engineering and Technology Lahore in Pakistan.

Cornelison, who is also an adjunct in the CBE department, develops therapeutic strategies for restoring neurological function after spinal cord injury and other forms of neural trauma. Drawing on principles from fluid dynamics, cancer biology, and materials science, his lab seeks to understand how fluid forces contribute to neurodegeneration as well as engineer biomaterial scaffolds to retrain and regrow the damaged central nervous system. As he says, “Cancer is adept at training its environment to promote tumor growth, while neural cells hinder tissue growth after injury. We aim to uncover how cancer can override inflammation and use this information to design regenerative biomaterials.” His group was awarded the prestigious National Institutes of Health Trailblazer Award on this topic. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and his B.S. from the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

Gummeson, who earned his Ph.D. in Computer Systems Engineering from UMass Amherst in January 2014, focuses his multidisciplinary research on the co-design of computer hardware and software. His work enables energy-efficient mobile-computing systems capable of accurately sensing humans and their surrounding environments. "More specifically, my current research largely focuses on developing novel sensing, communication, and energy-management techniques that enable closed-loop sensing systems [and] optimize our resources, health, and wireless environment," Gummeson explains. The techniques developed in his lab are applicable to any low-power, energy-constrained device, benefiting application spaces such as mobile health, smart homes, and precision agriculture. Reflecting his leadership in the field, Gummeson recently served as the Technical Program Committee Co-Chair for the premier ACM SenSys 2026 conference.

Huber is the director of the Human Robot Systems Laboratory, where her research explores how humans and robots can leverage physical interaction to enhance each other's capabilities, and the director of the UMass Integrative Locomotion Laboratory, which partners with industry to develop and evaluate technologies that improve running performance. In addition to her primary appointment in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, she holds adjunct appointments in Kinesiology, Biomedical Engineering, and Computer Science. She is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the NIH Trailblazer Award. She earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Rutgers University and The University of Texas at Dallas, respectively, before earning her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Northeastern University in 2016. She then trained as a postdoctoral researcher in Mechanical Engineering at MIT from 2016 to 2020 before joining UMass Amherst.

Oke directs the Networks for Accessibility, Resilience, and Sustainability Laboratory, which advances methods in artificial intelligence, optimization and simulation to analyze complex systems, with a focus on mobility, energy and water. As he says, “Our objective is to deepen our knowledge of these systems in the pursuit of resilient and sustainable communities.” Prior to his appointment at UMass, Oke served as a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2016 to 2019, and as a mathematics teacher at The Pennington School from 2010 to 2012. He received both his M.S.E. (2014) and Ph.D. (2016) in Civil Engineering from the John Hopkins University, and a B.A. (2010) from Williams College with majors in Physics and Music. Oke was awarded the Armstrong Fund for Science in 2024 and the Faculty Research/Healey Endowment Grant in 2025. He has published 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and his research has been supported by the NSF, EPA, USDOT and MassDOT.

Pradhan’s lab focuses on the etiology of injuries and fatalities due to motor-vehicle crashes as studied from a human factors and behavioral standpoint. As he says, “I have a specific interest in the impact of vehicle technologies and advanced automation on road-user safety, especially for young and novice drivers. The group's research goal is to uncover and disseminate evidence that can contribute to the safe mobility of road users, that can inform policy, and that can lead to technological and educational innovations for improving the road safety record.” Pradhan is also a co-director of the Human Performance Laboratory, which features an advanced driving simulator employed to conduct experiments that examine and understand driver behaviors. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. from UMass Amherst, his B.E. at Punjab Engineering College in India, and he completed a post-doc at the National Institutes of Health.