Dong, Khaleghi, and Touri Join ISE Faculty at Illinois

8/22/2025

ISE is excited to welcome three new faculty members this year! Yiwen Dong (human-centered AI and structural health), Roshanak Khaleghi (healthcare systems and data analytics), and Behrouz Touri (applied probability and optimization) bring expertise that spans disciplines and drives real-world impact. Their research strengthens ISE’s mission to innovate and prepare future engineers for today’s most pressing challenges.

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The Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering is proud to welcome three outstanding new faculty members whose expertise spans human-centered AI, healthcare systems and applied probability. Yiwen Dong, Roshanak Khaleghi and Behrouz Touri bring diverse research backgrounds and real-world impact to ISE, further strengthening our commitment to innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration and preparing the next generation of engineers to tackle society’s most pressing challenges.

Yiwen Dong is an interdisciplinary researcher joining ISE from Stanford University. Her research empowers civil structures to sense, model and respond to human health and well-being through the integration of structural dynamics, biomechanics and human-centered AI. Currently, she is pioneering the use of footstep-induced structural vibrations for human gait health monitoring. This innovative approach has made a real-world impact by enabling accessible tracking of muscular dystrophy progression in children from disadvantaged communities. In collaboration with the USDA, her work has also advanced animal welfare by analyzing pig-induced floor vibrations during the lactation period. Yiwen’s research has been recognized with publications in top-tier conferences and journals across civil, electrical, biomedical and agricultural engineering, earning multiple best paper and presentation awards. She received her M.S. in Structural Engineering from Stanford University and her B.Eng. in Civil Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

 

Roshanak Khaleghi received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Tehran, Iran, and her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2021. Her doctoral research focused on the control of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems. She joins ISE from Fraser Health Authority in Vancouver, Canada, where she worked as a Senior Data Analyst. In this role, she analyzed inpatient and emergency department data to provide insights on operational and clinical metrics, supporting data-driven decision-making and improving patient flow and outcomes. With her background in complex healthcare systems, Roshanak is eager to bring her industry experience into the classroom—fostering a learning environment that encourages innovation, critical thinking and the practical application of engineering principles in healthcare and beyond.

 

Behrouz Touri joins ISE from the University of California, San Diego, where he was an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Isfahan University of Technology in 2006, his M.Sc. in Coding Theory from Jacobs University in 2008, and his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2011. From 2011 to 2014, he held postdoctoral positions at the University of Illinois and Georgia Institute of Technology. He then served as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder (2014–2017) before joining UC San Diego. His research interests include applied probability theory, distributed optimization, learning and computation and game theory. He is the recipient of the American Automatic Control Council’s Donald P. Eckman Award (2018).

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This story was published August 22, 2025.