As the technology industry grows each year, so does the need for experts who create innovations that fuel this sector and educate the workforce that powers it.
With this demand in mind, UCF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science (CECS) has broken a hiring record with a total of 39 new faculty members joining the college’s seven departments in Fall 2025. This marks the third consecutive academic year that CECS has appointed more than 30 new faculty members, although it’s the first time this many have started in one semester.
The new professors, instructors and lecturers bring a wide range of expertise to the college, ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity to hypersonics and semiconductors. Michael Georgiopoulos, dean of CECS, says the new faculty’s breadth of knowledge aligns with the university’s strategic plan and enhances its reputation.
“The College of Engineering and Computer Science has hired several faculty members in the areas of AI, energy, digital twins and hypersonics, among others,” Georgiopoulos says. “It has expanded the college’s research and educational expertise in areas that are of national importance and are in line with UCF’s vision of being Florida’s Premier Engineering and Technology University.”
A total of eight new faculty are UCF alums, with three who graduated this past summer. Ali Gordon, the dean of graduate affairs, attributes this to the quality of the college’s graduates.
“In recent hiring cycles, applications for faculty positions here in CECS have been very high,” Gordon says. “Landing a professor or lecturer role here is more challenging every year. The success that our alumni have exhibited in attaining positions here speaks to the excellence of our college and its programs.”
The college is expected to bring aboard five additional faculty members in the spring semester, bringing the total number of new hires for the academic year to 44. Learn more about the mechanical and aerospace hires below.
Edward Clutter ’20MBA
Instructor
Clutter brings more than 20 years of industry experience from organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Siemens Energy and GE Energy. He earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Mississippi State in 1997 and a master’s degree in business administration from UCF in 2020. He is currently working toward a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from UCF. His work focuses on the application of computational fluid dynamics.
Phillip Hargrove
Instructor
Hargrove spent the first eight years of his professional career at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, serving as a launch vehicle trajectory analyst and a mission integration engineer with NASA’s Launch Services Program as well as leading K-12 and collegiate student engagement programs. He has extensive experience developing interface requirements for a wide variety of spacecraft from small CubeSats to large space-based observatories as well as validating launch service provider compliance with those requirements. Hargrove previously served as an adjunct faculty member for the Florida Institute of Technology Spaceport Education Center, where he has taught online courses in astrodynamics and orbital mechanics.
Aaron Hoskins
Associate Lecturer
Hoskins joins UCF as a tenured professor from California State University, Fresno. Prior to that, he worked at the Naval Research Laboratory at the Naval Center for Space Technology. He earned his doctoral degree in industrial engineering from Mississippi State University and his master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland. His research focuses include space situational awareness and satellite data analysis.
Rhett Jeffries
Senior Lecturer
Rhett Jefferies joins UCF from the Penn State Applied Research Laboratory, where he served as a research associate professor and led the fluid research department. He brings years of experience from government organizations such as the Federal Aviation Administration Office of Environment and Energy and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Shin Young Jeong
Assistant Professor
Jeong joins UCF from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, where he has served as a postdoctoral scholar since 2023. Prior to that, he earned his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Jeong’s research focuses on the development of commercial scale, particle-based concentrating solar thermal power and thermal energy storage. He has been published in various notable journals, including Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, and Renewable Energy, and is very involved with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. At UCF, he leads the Bulk Solids Energy Lab and is a member of the Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research (CATER).
Sung Min Jo
Assistant Professor
Prior to UCF, Jo worked as an assistant professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea. He earned his doctoral degree from KAIST and later conducted research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He specializes in computational hypersonics and plasma physics and educations. At UCF, he leads the Hypersonics and Plasma Research Group, focusing on uncertainty-aware plasma reaction dynamics, multi-physics coupled numerical methods and space situational awareness.
Hao “Will” Li
Lecturer
Li joins UCF from MIT, where he served as a lecturer for the university’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. His teaching interests include numerical computation, mechanics of materials, and measurement and instrumentation. His research interests include engineering education and problem solving. A common theme in his work is simple but descriptive, mathematical models to analyze human-centered problems. He earned his doctoral and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT.
Patrick Meagher
Assistant Professor
Meagher’s research focuses on the deployment of extreme-scale computational fluid dynamics and molecular dynamics simulations to reveal unique physics occurring in the supersonic or hypersonic reacting flows at the micro- and nanoscale, and to couple these phenomena to the performance of high-speed propulsion systems and vehicles. Meagher earned his doctoral degree and bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut. In 2022, he was awarded the Zeldovich Fellowship by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for excellence in detonation research. Meagher was also appointed as a visiting student researcher in the NanoEnergy Lab at Stanford University, and served as a student researcher with Google Research.
Darshan Yadav
Lecturer
Prior to joining UCF, Yadav taught classes on computer-aided design and engineering, the mechanics of materials and structural dynamics at the Florida Institute of Technology. He earned his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from FIT in 2023. His doctoral research focused on improving the mechanical characteristics of additively manufactured parts using ultrafast lasers for surface modifications