Olin Welcomes New Faculty for Fall 2024

After completing a one-year postdoctoral position at Northeastern University’s College of Engineering in the Field Robotics Laboratory, alumna Victoria Preston ’16 joined the Olin faculty this summer as an assistant professor of engineering.

Originally from Edgewater, Maryland, Preston came to Olin as an undergraduate to explore her love of robotics, an interest of hers since high school, but also to follow other academic passions.

“In addition to pursuing robotics in high school, I also cared about the environment, loved math and science, and was interested in teaching and education, so I wanted to go somewhere I could explore all those different options,” says Preston. “Ending up back at Olin is a full-circle moment for me, and I’m excited to be a part of Olin’s faculty, who are great at expanding the notion of what teaching and learning roles can look like.”

Prior to her post-doc position at Northeastern, Preston earned her PhD from the departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering from the MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Joint Program. Her research focused on algorithm development for creating intelligent robots that perform complex environmental monitoring tasks in deep-ocean, coastal, or polar domains with the ultimate goal of supporting scientific discovery.

“My research interest is about putting robots in the right place at the right time to collect useful measurements of complex and ever-changing environments,” says Preston. “I’m excited about two key areas: the resiliency of our coastal systems and estuaries, as well as exploring the deep ocean, such as using robots to help scientists study underwater volcanoes or working on coral reef restoration and conservation efforts.”

Preston is looking forward to involving students out in the field and on the water as they explore groundbreaking use cases for robotics and complex data collection for climate and environmental studies. 

“I love to help students foster their natural creativity and curiosity about the world, so they can develop a holistic entrepreneurial mindset, and become better citizens of the planet,” says Preston. “Understanding environmental monitoring, and being on interdisciplinary teams made up of engineers, scientists, policymakers, and citizens—I’m looking forward to supporting students with those experiences in and out of the classroom so they can see firsthand the intersection of environmental science, climate, and robotics.”

This fall, Preston will teach the introductory “Computational Robotics” course; in the spring, she will co-teach “Quantitative Engineering Analysis II.”

Jesse Austin-Breneman has joined the Olin faculty as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. He was previously an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan, where he ran a lab focused on helping multidisciplinary design teams think at a systems level to find the best global design.

Born in Washington, D.C., Austin-Breneman moved around a lot while growing up, living in places like Mexico, Uruguay, and South Africa. After earning his undergraduate degree in ocean engineering from MIT, he worked as a development engineer at several Peruvian NGOs, developing engineering projects with rural communities and developing low-cost medical devices to test for tuberculosis.

In 2009, Austin-Breneman decided to go back to MIT, earning his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and then becoming an MIT Tata Center Post-doctoral Fellow. There he studied design processes used by teams of practitioners in both developing economies and aerospace organizations.

Prior to his move into higher education, Austin-Breneman spent two years as a high school mathematics teacher at Boston Latin School.

“At Olin, I’m excited really push myself to become a better teacher and educator and to try new things,” says Austin-Breneman. “Throughout my teaching career, I’ve always been interested in new ways to get content to students and to talk about making things, and I am looking forward to spending more time doing that here with a group of people who are also excited about doing that.”

One of Austin-Breneman’s main research interests is in engineering for sustainable development, in which he uses optimization and complex systems engineering methods to help engineering teams solve problems in the most efficient ways. 

“For example, I’ve collaborated with professors in Uganda, South Africa, and Ghana to optimize the design of farm systems for resilience, taking into account complex factors like crop selection, irrigation systems, and microgrid capabilities,” says Austin-Breneman. “We also work closely with the farmers to learn about their objectives and ground our models in the real world so they can invest their money and time wisely.”

Another big thrust of Austin-Breneman’s research is the challenge of understanding the social impact of our engineering decisions.

“Technology is deeply embedded into people’s lives, and as engineers we need to be aware of how the decisions we make will impact society at big levels,” he says. “Engineering is about being generative and predicting the potential impact of the solutions we create, so because I come from the sustainable development field, I’m interested in asking the question ‘How will the technology we’re going to create change the system it operates in both in the short- and long-term?’”

This fall, Austin-Breneman will teach “Mechanical Design” and on the teaching team for “Modeling and Simulation.” This spring, he’ll teach a design depth class on design optimization and rotate into additional design classes over time.

Outside of the classroom, Austin-Breneman likes to experiment with new fabrication methods—from making a bass guitar to leatherworking—when he makes family Halloween costumes for himself, his wife, and their 13- and 9-year-old kids. He’s also a diverse musician, playing the harmonica and piano frequently, but also picking up new instruments regularly, such as the mandolin, ukelele, and accordion. 

Born and raised in Nicaragua, Andrea Cuadra ’13 first encountered Olin when she obtained her undergraduate degree in Engineering: Interaction Design; this summer, she came full circle when she joined the faculty as an assistant professor of computer science.

“I loved Olin as a student; it changed the way I thought about engineering and problem-solving to make them both more human-centered,” says Cuadra. After graduating from Olin, Cuadra co-founded her own company called Crazy Machine, where she spent two years leading a group that was inventing toys and games. 

Wanting to learn more about product design, Cuadra left this role to obtain her M.Sc. in Engineering: Product Design from Stanford University. While learning more about design research at Stanford, Cuadra became interested in academia, which led her to Cornell University to pursue her M.Sc. and then Ph.D. in Information Science.

Cuadra then completed a computer science postdoctoral role in human-computer interaction back at Stanford, with the ultimate goal was to get a teaching position at an institution like Olin.

“I was a course assistant at Olin, Stanford, and Cornell, and I also taught a class as a postdoc, so I’m excited to come back to my academic roots at Olin,” says Cuadra. “I love how thoughtful the Olin community is about how it teaches; over the summer some faculty were doing research on integrating new technology into their curriculum. It’s really exciting to see how much of a voice students are empowered to have here, and to see such a strong community effort towards enacting excellent learning experiences.”

Cuadra’s Ph.D. work was centered on inclusive design in technology, specifically at how mainstream technologies (such as voice assistants like Alexa and Siri) could better reflect the needs and preferences of older adults who have historically been excluded from the design process. During her postdoc, she expanded that work into other areas, such as building systems to create effective educational experiences that have conversational aspects.

“At Olin, I hope to bring back some of the playful elements that I worked with when I was inventing toys and games, using some of the conversational technology that is powered by artificial intelligence to serve currently underrepresented groups,” says Cuadra.

This fall, Cuadra will teach “Principles of Integrated Engineering”—one of her favorite courses when she was an undergraduate. In the spring, she’ll teach “Collaborative Design,” as well as shadow the instructors for “Software Design” so that she can begin teaching it eventually as well.

In her downtime, Cuadra is passionate about a sport called “wing foiling,” which is similar to windsurfing, but the sail is not attached to the board. She’s excited to try this sport on some new-to-her bodies of water in Massachusetts, though the shark population in Cape Cod makes her a little nervous. She lives with her wife and their cat, Puchi.