Welcome Courant's Newest Faculty Members (AY 2024-25)

The Courant Institute is excited to welcome ten new faculty members this semester. The impressive group represents a wide range of backgrounds and research interests—read through their short bios below and extend a warm welcome when you see them on campus!

Sai Qian Zhang, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, specializes in algorithm and hardware co-design for efficient deep neural network implementation. He received his B.A.Sc and M.A.Sc degrees from the University of Toronto, before completing his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2021. Dr. Zhang joins Courant from the Meta Reality Labs, where he worked as a senior research scientist focused on AR/VR algorithm and hardware design. His position is a joint appointment with the Tandon School of Engineering.

Nir Bitansky, Associate Professor of Computer Science, received his Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University in 2015. He is interested in the theory of computation at large and the theory of cryptography in particular. Dr. Bitansky joins us from the faculty of Tel Aviv University’s School of Computer Science; he previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Eunsol Choi, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Data Science, joins Courant from a faculty position at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research spans natural language processing and machine learning, with a focus on interpreting and reasoning about text in dynamic real-world contexts. She received her Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from University of Washington and worked as a visiting researcher at Google AI. She will hold a joint position between Courant and the Center for Data Science.

Sam Westrick, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, joins Courant from Carnegie Mellon University, where he has worked as a postdoctoral researcher since completing his Ph.D. in 2022. His research focuses on provably efficient implementations of high-level programming languages, especially for parallel programming. His goal is to make it simpler and safer to develop parallel software by providing strong safety and performance guarantees.

Sherry Yang, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, received her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley and her B.S. and M.Eng. from MIT. Dr. Yang’s research aims to develop machine learning models with internet-scale knowledge to make better-than-human decisions. She has worked as a Research Scientist at Google DeepMind; she will join Courant’s faculty in 2025.

Kendall Gibson, Clinical Assistant Professor of Mathematics, received her B.S. from Louisiana Tech University before completing her Ph.D. at Tulane University, studying computational fluid dynamics under advisor Lisa Fauci. Dr. Gibson’s research interests include modeling biological processes of complex systems, such as the hydrodynamic performance of microorganisms with flexible appendages.

Yehonatan Sella, Clinical Assistant Professor of Mathematics, received his B.A. in Mathematics from the University of California Berkeley before completing his Ph.D. at the University of California Los Angeles in 2017. He studies the mathematics of systems and computational biology with a focus on medical application. Dr. Sella joins Courant from the Department of Systems & Computational Biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Liming Pang, Clinical Assistant Professor of Mathematics, received his B.S. in Mathematics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology before completing his M.S. and Ph.D. under the supervision of Sylvain Cappell here at Courant, where he has worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor since 2018. Dr. Pang specializes in topology, specifically geometric topology, knot theory, braid groups, and 3-manifolds.

We will also welcome two visiting faculty members this academic year:

Rotem Oshman, Visiting Associate Professor of Computer Science, is a faculty member of Tel-Aviv University’s Department of Computer Science. Her main research interests are distributed computing, communication complexity, and formal methods in computer science. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed postdoctoral research at the Princeton Center for Computational Intractability.

Jorge Arvesú Carballo, Visiting Associate Professor of Mathematics, is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Charles III University of Madrid, Spain. His research interests include approximation theory, orthogonal polynomials, special functions, Fourier analysis, and analytic number theory. He received his B.S. and M.S. from Moscow State University before completing his Ph.D. at Charles III University. Dr. Carballo has held visiting positions at Baylor University and Utah State University.