Three junior faculty members in The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering at UC Santa Barbara have received a financial boost from recent awards announced by the UCSB Academic Personnel Office. Technology management assistant professor Sukhun Kang and mechanical engineering assistant professor Ousmane Kodio each received Regents’ Junior Faculty Fellowships (RJFFs), which recognize early-career faculty and support the continued development of their research and academic trajectories. Computer science assistant teaching professor Maryam Majedi, received a Faculty Career Development Award (FCDA), which provides faculty with dedicated time and resources to advance their research and creative work
Descriptions of each faculty members’ research project follow below:
Redefining Innovation
Technology management assistant professor Sukhun Kang has received a Regents’ Junior Faculty Fellowship (RJFF) from UCSB’s Academic Personnel Office e to support his project, Redefining Innovation Measures in Strategy Research. The fellowship provides $7,500 to advance the work of promising early-career faculty, enabling them to pursue new lines of research and strengthen their academic trajectories. Kang’s project addresses a long-standing challenge in innovation research: how to measure innovation in ways that truly capture its impact.
“Empirical work relies largely on patent counts and citations, which give a narrow, firm-centric view of innovation,” he explained. “Those traditional metrics overlook other meaningful outcomes such as consumer adoption, societal benefit, or improvements to quality of life.”
To broaden the field’s understanding, Kang is conducting a comprehensive study that combines a literature meta-analysis, qualitative case studies of firms and sectors, and quantitative tests of alternative metrics — such as consumer adoption rates, societal indices, and quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) in pharmaceuticals. The goal is to build a multidimensional measurement framework that better predicts both firm performance and social impact.
“The recognition associated with this fellowship validates the project’s novelty and enables the planned data collection and firm engagement,” said Kang. “Personally, it boosts my confidence in pursuing novel projects and assures me there will be future funding opportunities like this. Professionally, it strengthens my external funding record and accelerates progress toward publishable results and tenure.”
As an assistant professor, Kang sees awards like the RJFF as essential.
“They buy protected research time and fund research assistants, data purchases, and fieldwork,” he said. “They also provide external validation that improves competitiveness for larger grants and tenure review.”
By expanding how innovation is measured, Kang’s work stands to influence not only academic research, but also managerial decision-making and public policy.
“Better metrics lead to better strategy and better outcomes,” he added. “This project helps ensure that when we talk about innovation, we’re measuring what truly matters — the ideas and technologies that make a real difference.”
Kang received his PhD in strategy and entrepreneurship from the London Business School. His research has garnered several awards including the Sumantra Ghoshal Research and Practice Award from the Academy of Management (AOM), the Distinguished Best Paper Award from AOM’s Strategy and Management Division, and the Industry Studies Association’s Rising Star Best Paper Award,
Integrating Ethics
Maryam Majedi joined the UCSB Computer Science Department as an assistant teaching professor in July 2023, following a teaching postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto and a PhD in data privacy from the University of Calgary. In 2025, she was one of eight faculty members from campus to receive Faculty Career Development Awards from UCSB’s Academic Personnel Office.
“As a junior faculty member, these awards are significant because they provide both credibility and capacity,” said Majedi. “Early in an academic career, recognition from the university validates the direction of one’s research, showing that is valued by the broader academic community. This award not only strengthens my confidence in pursuing interdisciplinary work at the intersection of ethics and computer science but also helps establish a stronger foundation for future external funding and collaborations.”
The award supports Majedi’s project, Embedding Ethics in Computer Science Curriculum, which addresses a persistent gap in computer science education. While students learn how to build technology, she explains, they are rarely taught to consider who is affected by it or how their design choices may lead to unintended harms such as privacy breaches, bias, discrimination, or exclusion. The Embedded Ethics project bridges this gap by integrating ethics into core computer science courses through a series of embedded ethics modules.
“Each module pairs technical concepts with ethical dimensions, helping students reflect on the real-world implications while they learn the underlying computing principles,” said Majedi.
With support from the award, Majedi launched her program’s website, embeddedethics.cs.ucsb.edu, and submitted four modules for publication. Her group and collaborators at Stanford University are also working to adapt and extend their modules for use in Portland Public Schools’ computer science curriculum.
“The real-world impact of this work lies in preparing computer science graduates who are not only technically skilled but also socially responsible innovators — capable of recognizing ethical challenges, designing fairer technologies, and shaping a more equitable digital world,” she said.
Majedi emphasized that the award represents more than the $7,500 in funding — it signals that her work to integrate ethics in computing truly matters.
“As educators, we are shaping not only what students know but also how they think about the consequences of what they build,” said Majedi. “I am very grateful that UCSB recognizes the importance of this project and is supporting early-career faculty in leading this kind of transformative work.”
Ousmane Kodio, a mechanical engineering assistant professor, received a Regents' Junior Faculty Fellowship in support of his research project, Mechanics of Active Filaments. His research group studies the patterns in soft matter and fluids mechanics.
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