2025 Outstanding Faculty Award Recipient
Malek Adjouad
Professor with the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Malek Adjouadi is a Professor with the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Florida International University. He is the founding director of the Center for Advanced Technology and Education funded by the National Science Foundation since 1993. He received his BS degree (June 1978) from Oklahoma State University and his MS and PhD degrees (June 1981 and August 1985, respectively) from the University of Florida. All degrees were from Electrical Engineering. His early work on Computer Vision Techniques to Help the Blind have led him to provide testimony to the US Senate committee of Veterans Affairs on technology to help persons with visual disabilities on April of 1987. His research interests are in image and signal processing, assistive technology research to help persons with motor and visual disabilities, and neuroscience with applications to epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease.
Past winners
- 2024: Diana Azzam, Electrical & Computer Engineering, College of Engineering & Computing
Diana AzzamEnvironmental Health Sciences, Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work
Diana Azzam, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Florida International University. She has a Masters in Biochemistry from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from the University of Miami, Florida. Her lab focuses on implementing functional precision medicine (FPM) approaches in adult and pediatric cancer patients that have run out of treatment options.
Working with local hospitals including Nicklaus Children's Hospital and Cleveland Clinic Florida, her lab delivers individualized treatment plans based on a patient’s cancer genomic profile and ex vivo drug response. She is currently engaged in two clinical studies to assess feasibility and clinical utility of FPM in relapsed/refractory patients with childhood cancer (ClinicalTrials.gov registration: NCT05857969) and adult cancer (ClinicalTrials.gov registration: NCT06024603).
Dr. Azzam is working on setting up the first CLIA-certified lab in the State of Florida dedicated for functional cancer drug testing. Her goal is to launch large-scale prospective multi-center randomized clinical trials to better assess efficacy of FPM approaches in the treatment of refractory/relapsed cancers. In parallel, she is working on utilizing FPM as a tool to reduce health disparities in childhood cancer patients from minority populations. She is also integrating a novel machine learning approach to identify specific biomarkers among minority populations that can be targeted using FDA-approved drugs. Her lab also investigates cancer stem cells and how they may result from chronic environmental exposures to toxic metals such as arsenic.
- 2023: Selcuk Uluagac, Electrical & Computer Engineering, College of Engineering & Computing
Selcuk UluagacElectrical & Computer Engineering, College of Engineering & Computing
Dr. Selcuk Uluagac is currently an Eminent Scholar Chaired Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Science at Florida International University, leading the Cyber-Physical Systems Security Lab with an additional courtesy appointment in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Before, he was a Senior Researcher at Georgia Tech and Symantec. He holds a PhD from Georgia Tech and MS from Carnegie Mellon University in cybersecurity. He is an expert in the areas of cybersecurity and privacy with an emphasis on their practical aspects (focusing on systems security topics, malware, ransomware, forensics, IoT, CPS, smart systems) and teaches classes in these areas. He has hundreds of papers/studies/publications in the most reputable venues such as NDSS, USENIX Security, IEEE TIFS. He received US National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award (2015), US Air Force Office of Sponsored Research’s Summer Faculty Fellowship (2015), University of Padova (Italy)’s Faculty Fellowship (2016), Google’s ASPIRE Research award in security and privacy (2021), Faculty Fellowship from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy (2022), FIU Provost Office Top Scholar Award in Established Faculty with Significant Grants (STEM Category), (2023), FIU Provost Office Top Scholar Award in Faculty with Notable Gains in Student Learning and Success (Sciences Category) (2021), FIU College of Engineering and Computing Faculty Award in Excellence in Research and Creative Activities (2021), FIU Eminent Scholar Chaired Associate Professor in the College of Engineering and Computing (2020), among others. His research has been funded by numerous government agencies and industry, e.g., NSF, Dept. of Energy, Air Force Research Lab, Dept. of Labor, Cyber Florida, Google, Microsoft, Trend Micro, and Cisco, inter alia. He is very entrepreneurial and visionary with his research. Many of his research ideas have resulted in patents (10+). He is chairing/serving on the of top-tier security conferences, e.g., NDSS, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, IEEE SP. In 2023, he was the TPC Chair of Security and ML Track of ACM CCS 2023 and was the General Chair of ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (ACM WiSec) in 2019. In 2018, he co-chaired the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Annual Expo and Conference. In 2022, he was the TPC Co-Chair of IEEE CNS Conference. He currently serves as the deputy editor in-chief of IEEE TIFS and associate editors of IEEE TMC and Elsevier COMNET journals. More information can be obtained from https://nweb.eng.fiu.edu/selcuk/ and his lab at https://csl.fiu.edu/.
- 2022: Dr. José A. Faria, College of Engineering & Computing
Dr. José A. FariaMoss Endowed Chair, College of Engineering & Computing
Dr. Faria has a B.S. Industrial Engineering from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, in Caracas Venezuela, a M.S. in Systems Engineering and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has worked at FIU for the Moss School of Construction, Infrastructure, and Sustainability since 2006, and has three years of prior adjunct/lecturer appointments at the American University, Washington D.C., and the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to his academic work, he worked in the beverage industry for ten years, where he developed and installed several bottling systems both in the US and internationally. This industry experience has opened many possibilities in the Central and South America region.
He has publications related to integer optimization applied to land development, mathematical decomposition and hybrid techniques to solve mixed integer programming problems, decision analysis applied to capital allocation, and probabilistic optimization models. His current research is in applications of RFID technologies to the transportation and construction industries, quality in construction and lean construction. He has taught courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels, and is currently the Moss Endowed Chair of the Moss Department of Construction Management. He has also served as the Program Director of a Susan Harwood Training Grant.
- 2021: Charles Jalloh, College of Law
Professor Charles Jalloh
Professor of Law, College of Law
Dr. Charles C. Jalloh is a Professor of International and Criminal Law, founding editor of the African Journal of Legal Studies and the African Journal of International Criminal Justice, and a prestigious Member of the International Law Commission. Professor Jalloh has practiced law at both the domestic and international levels and appeared as external counsel to the African Union Commission. A recipient of several research awards, including the FIU Top Scholar Award, and the FIU Senate Faculty Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activities, Professor Jalloh was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Public International Law at Lund University in Sweden for the 2018-2019 academic year. His education includes law degrees from McGill and Oxford Universities, as well as a Ph.D. in International Law from the University of Amsterdam. His most recent book is The Legal Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
- 2021: Jorge Valdes, Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing & Health Sciences
Dr. Jorge Valdes
Clinical Associate Professor; Interim Chair, Nurse Anesthesia Department, Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing & Public Health
As a native of Miami, Dr. Valdes is immersed in the cultural issues in South Florida. He actively advocates for diversity and inclusion in education and Nurse Anesthesiology practice. He is a champion within nurse anesthesia programs for the recruitment, mentorship, and success of minority students in decreasing health disparities and inequalities amongst these demographics. Since his appointment at FIU in January 2017, Dr. Valdes has had a continuous engagement in research, publications, presentations and has chaired over 30 Doctor in Nursing Practice projects. Dr. Valdes is a prolific speaker, co-author of book chapters on diversity, and author of numerous publications. Dr. Valdes strongly believes in increasing minority representation in healthcare can reduce health disparities and inequalities. In 2014, he appeared before the Florida House of Representatives’ Healthcare Innovation Subcommittee in Tallahassee as an expert clinician in healthcare issues. Dr. Valdes’ influential testimony served as a catalyst to passing Florida’s first autonomous Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Practice Bill.