2018 Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellows
Julie Nucci
Adjunct Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Director of Education and Outreach for PARADIM
Julie Nucci is an Adjunct Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and the Director of Education and Outreach for PARADIM, the Platform for the Accelerated Realization, Analysis, and Discovery of Interface Materials, an NSF-funded Materials Innovation Platform. She earned a B.S. in Materials Engineering from RPI, an M.S. in Applied Physics from Harvard University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell, where her dissertation focused on the reliability of copper metallization for integrated circuits. Following a professional hiatus to spend time with her two young daughters, she worked as a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart, Germany. Upon returning to the US, she made a major career shift away from research and toward STEM education as the Director of Education Programs for the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Cornell University. There she led the CNS Institute for Physics Teachers (CIPT), which trained nearly two thousand high school physics teachers and created laboratory activities that were used tens of thousands of times by students across the country. She also served on the New York State Leadership Team for the development and review of the Next Generation Science Standards for K-12 education. She currently teaches MSE Senior Lab, a team-based research course, and ENGRG 3360, a new engineering communication course.
Tapan Parikh
Associate Professor, Information Science at Cornell Tech
Tapan is an associate professor at Cornell Tech. His research includes HCI and the design and evaluation of information technologies for education, civic engagement and sustainable development. Tapan's students have started several tech companies based on his research and his teaching. He holds a Sc.B. degree in Molecular Modeling with Honors from Brown University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Washington, where his dissertation won the William Chan Memorial award. Tapan has received the NSF Career award, a Sloan Fellowship and the TR35 humanitarian of the year award.