Meet the new ECE faculty members

As a new semester begins, we welcome four new faculty members to ECE. Meet Giulia Fanti, Carlee Joe-Wong, Gauri Joshi, and Bryan Parno.

Giulia Fanti

Please introduce yourself.
My name is Giulia Fanti, originally from Lexington, Kentucky. I got my B.S. from Olin College, my Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley, and I'm currently finishing a postdoc at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I'm interested in privacy and anonymity--enabling people to interact with the world, both on- and offline, without giving up control of their personal information. My research typically involves some combination of designing new tools, theoretically analyzing their performance, and building prototypes.

What excites you most about teaching at CMU?
I've heard that CMU's students are really motivated and creative, so I'm most looking forward to interacting with them. I'm excited to see the projects they come up with!

What can future students look forward to as they interact with you as a faculty member?
On the teaching side, I like to make lectures interactive, with lots of questions and problem-solving. My goal is to make it easy to stay engaged. So hopefully, students can look forward to an active learning experience. On the research side, I like to work on problems that require skills from different areas of study. Through collaboration and self-learning, students can look forward to acquiring a broad set of skills, without being limited by the tools our lab already "knows".

What is a fun fact about you that would surprise your students?
I like to play soccer.

Carlee JoE-Wong

Please introduce yourself.
My names is Carlee Joe-Wong. I grew up in West Hills, CA (a suburb of Los Angeles), but I spent the last eight years at Princeton earning my undergradrate and Ph.D. degrees.

What excites you most about teaching at CMU?
Working with the students! All of the students I’ve talked with so far have been amazingly enthusiastic and creative. The experience has only reinforced my impression that CMU has a uniquely interdisciplinary and collaborative research culture, and I can’t wait to contribute to it.

What can future students look forward to as they interact with you as a faculty member?
My research interests can include just about anything that involves the Internet, math, and/or economics, and I especially enjoy working on problems that I believe can have a real-world impact. I want to encourage my students to develop similarly wide-ranging and practical interests, and I hope to learn as much from them as they will learn from me.

What is a fun fact about you that would surprise your students?
I played classical violin and piano as a child, and I still have books of old sheet music that I used to play. I haven’t touched a violin in years, but I still try to practice piano when I can.

Gauri Joshi

Please introduce yourself.
I am Gauri Joshi, currently a Research Staff Member at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in NY. I am incredibly excited to start as an assistant professor at CMU in Fall 2017. I recently completed my Ph.D. from MIT, working on efficient redundancy techniques to reduce delay in cloud systems. More broadly, my research seeks to provide insights into the design of computing systems via stochastic modeling and analysis.

Before starting graduate school at MIT, I spent five amazing years at IIT Bombay where I completed a Dual degree (B. Tech and M. Tech) in Electrical Engineering. I grew up in the dazzling city of Mumbai in India, and am a quintessential big-city girl.

What excites you most about teaching at CMU?
I have always wanted to be a professor. It is wonderful to have my dream finally come true and I cannot think of a better place than CMU to start my academic career. Being a global powerhouse of Electrical and Computer Engineering, CMU attracts some of the brightest students in the world. It is a matter of great pride to be a part of their journey at CMU. I am also excited to continue being a student, and learn from the numerous renowned faculty members in ECE and other departments.

What can future students look forward to as they interact with you as a faculty member?
I was fortunate to get several opportunities to work in the industry, including my current position at IBM. As a result of these experiences, I have developed a taste for solving state-of-the-art engineering problems, using a rigorous and mathematical approach. Students working with me can look forward to this style of research, and building industrial collaborations.

I also believe that a faculty advisor’s enthusiasm and willingness to engage in research discussions is a strong motivator for students. And this encouragement is just as important as the technical inputs the advisor provides. I would like to be such a mentor who supports the students in all aspects of their learning, at CMU and beyond.

What is a fun fact about you that would surprise your students?
I love puzzles of all kinds: brain teasers, Rubik's cubes, wooden puzzles, magic tricks, jigsaw puzzles; the list is endless. I plan to incorporate them in my teaching to make classes accessible and interactive. I have also found that posing research problems as puzzles is a fun and rewarding approach to solving them.

My other passion is cooking good food. I enjoy experimenting with varied ingredients and cuisines, and reading about the science behind food. Students working with me can look forward to tasting the products of my successful cooking experiments.

Bryan Parno

Please introduce yourself.
Hi, I’m Bryan Parno. I grew up in Exton, Pennsylvania, a small suburb of Philadelphia. I received a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, and a Master’s and Ph.D. in ECE from CMU. After graduating from CMU, I worked at Microsoft Research for six and a half years before returning to Pittsburgh.

What excites you most about teaching at CMU?
There are a huge number of interesting and important challenges in computer security right now. I’m excited to be able to share those challenges and some useful ideas, tools, and strategies with the high-caliber students at CMU. Hopefully this will start some of them down the road of solving these problems.

What can future students look forward to as they interact with you as a faculty member?
After doing research in security, cryptography, and systems, in government, academic, and corporate environments, I’ve got a story, a paper, or a webcomic to recommend for almost any situation.

What is a fun fact about you that would surprise your students?
In college, I ran with the bulls in Pamplona. It seemed like a good idea right up until everyone started running!