Stephen Arce, Ph.D.
Teaching Faculty II in chemical & biomedical engineering
Dr. Arce joins our faculty after several years as a Professor of Lecture at the University of Florida’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. He will help build out the new Biomedical Engineering degree program at FAMU-FSU Engineering. “My goal as a faculty is to guide students to be successful far beyond graduation, not just while they are in our classrooms,” Arce explains. “In biomedical engineering, this involves multiple stakeholders from clinical and academic partners to a growing biotech industry. My focus is to understand the needs of our stakeholders and provide relevant hands-on experiences for our students to prepare them for their professional lives. Each student comes to us with their own unique set of skills and experiences, and I believe we should build upon that knowledge to instill a common foundation of technical knowledge. Our graduates can then leverage their education in creative new ways to solve existing problems in healthcare and create new opportunities through engineering.”
Qian Zhang, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in civil & environmental engineering
Dr. Zhang received her PhD degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a focus on Structures and Materials from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2015. Prior to joining the college, she had an appointment at University of Louisiana at Lafayette where she worked as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Zhang’s research interest is primarily in high-performance and multi-functional cementitious materials and innovative application of advanced materials in structures and infrastructure. She has worked on multiple research projects including developing novel spray-applied fire-resistive materials to enhance the performance of steel buildings under multi-hazard fire events; applying engineered cementitious composites as interlayers for pavement repairs; self-healing concrete materials; and impact resistant cementitious composites for impact protection. Her work resulted in one US patent and over 15 peer-reviewed journal publications.
Natalie Arnett, Ph.D.
Associate Professor in chemical & biomedical engineering
Dr. Arnett joins the faculty from Fisk University, where she focused her research on polymers for use in fuel cells, reverse osmosis for water purification, and for solar cells. At FAMU-FSU Engineering, she will focus her efforts on developing polymers for membrane applications and tissue engineering. She received her PhD from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University and brings with her a coveted CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.
Rebekah Sweat, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in industrial & manufacturing engineering
Dr. Sweat’s research and teaching interests are in the areas of micromechanics, nanomaterials, composites, digital twin technology, predictive simulations, and multifunctional materials. She received her Ph.D. through FSU at the FAMU-FSU Engineering Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. She also has a B.S. in Mathematics and a B.A. in Economics from the University of North Florida. Her graduate work culminated in the development of a scalable process for aligning carbon nanotube sheets for incorporation in structural and multifunctional composites. Her recent role as a research scientist at Solvay in the Composite Materials Business Unit included experimental and computational micromechanics, where she aimed to identify next-generation materials through the combination of fundamental and applied methodologies. She collaborated with eight universities over four countries as an industry researcher. The materials that she advanced at Solvay have applications in the aerospace, automotive and the oil and gas industries. She is a passionate STEM mentor, teacher, and trainer for industry and academic researchers.