This story is published in YFile’s New Faces Feature Issue 2020, part two. Every September, YFile introduces and welcomes those joining the York University community, and those with new appointments. Part one was published in the Sept. 11 edition.
The Lassonde School of Engineering welcomes five new faculty members this fall: Marzieh Ahmadzadeh, Amir Chinaei, Stephanie Gora, Kamelia (Camellia) Atefi Monfared and Maleknaz Nayebi.
Marzieh Ahmadzadeh
Marzieh Ahmadzadeh
Marzieh Ahmadzadeh joins Lassonde’s Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department as assistant professor. She received her PhD degree from the University of Nottingham, U.K. in 2006, where she had also obtained her MSc degree in information technology, specialized in software engineering in 2002. Her BSc is in computer engineering from Isfahan University. She has worked in academia since 2006 in a number of computer science and engineering departments, including Shiraz University of Technology, the University of Toronto and University of Georgia, U.S. Prior to 2015, before she decided to dedicate herself to teaching, she proudly supervised a number of talented MSc and PhD students. She is also a certified professional engineer (P.Eng.) in Ontario. Working in both industry and academia, she realized that computer science and engineering education requires more attention. This inspired her to carry out research in computer science/engineering education and human computer interaction, where these two areas converge. Besides CE and HCI research, she is also interested in applied data mining. Her work has been published in the prestigious ACM and IEEE conferences and journals.
Amir Chinaei
Amir H. Chinaei
Amir Chinaei is an assistant professor in Lassonde’s Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department. He obtained his PhD in computer science from the University of Waterloo in 2007. He received his MSc and BSc degrees in software engineering from the Amirkabir University of Technology – Tehran Polytechnic, and Isfahan University in Iran, respectively.
Chinaei has over 20 years of experience in software industry as well as in various computer science and engineering departments and has coached more than 100 students in developing fully fledged information systems. Chinaei is recognized for Teaching Excellence in Computer Science at the University of Toronto, prior joining York in 2017.
Stephanie Gora
Stephanie Gora
Joining Lassonde’s Civil Engineering Department as assistant professor, Stephanie Gora’s research focuses on drinking water management in small and Arctic communities and the development and evaluation of light-based technologies for water purification. She previously held a NSERC postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Water Resources Studies at Dalhousie University and holds a PhD in civil engineering with a focus on drinking water treatment from the University of Toronto. Between 2009 and 2012 she worked as a consulting engineer at CBCL Limited in Halifax and is registered as a professional engineer. Gora is actively involved in various industry associations including the American Water Works Association and the International UV Association. Between 2009 and 2019 she was the lead singer in various indie rock bands in Halifax and Toronto. She continues to enjoy photography, hiking, songwriting and spending time with her friends and family.
Kamelia (Camellia) Atefi Monfared
Kamelia Atefi
Kamelia Atefi is an assistant professor in Lassonde’s Civil Engineering Department. She completed her master’s, doctoral and postdoctoral studies in civil engineering at the University of Waterloo. Prior to joining York University in August 2020, she was an assistant professor in the Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering Department at the University at Buffalo, N.Y., since 2016. Atefi is a registered professional engineer in Ontario. She has more than 12 years of research experience in constitutive, analytical and numerical modeling in computational geomechanics. Her research contributes to development of resilient and sustainable energy production/storage technologies, and design for climate change through a fundamental understanding of coupled geomechanical processes (hydraulic-mechanical-thermal-dynamics). Her current research involves enhancement of hydrocarbon, geothermal and aquifer storage recovery operations; prediction of geo-environmental impacts of deep production/injection operations; tunneling in extreme geological settings; geomechanics of glacier basal motion; and bio-mediated soil improvement.
Maleknaz Nayebi
Maleknaz Nayebi
Maleknaz Nayebi is an assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department in Lassonde. Before this time, she was a professor at Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal for 18 months. She received her PhD degree from Software Engineering Decision Support (SEDS) lab at The University of Calgary in Canada. Nayebi has been working on software open innovation with a focus on the platform mediated software products. She is one of the main collaborators on DEEL Collaborative Research and Development Grants with a total value of $2 million dollars. She is also a professor of IVADO data science institute with the role of fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration with industry. She has six years of professional software engineering experience. Her main research interests are in mining software repositories for open innovation in two-sided markets. Nayebi co-chaired SANER 2020 ERA track, ESEM 2020 Emerging ideas track, RE data track 2018, IASESE 2018 advanced school, and several workshops. She is a member of the IEEE and ACM. Maleknaz leads lead a team of students and associates on analytical methods for decision support in software innovation in society.