Advisory Board - Engineering Transfer Program (ENGN)

Assistant Dean Maher oversees undergraduate affairs operations for the College of Engineering, including the coordination of academic advising services, scholastic standing matters, degree audits, and degree conferral. She serves as the primary contact for all prospective undergraduate students, including transfer students and applicants for readmission. Opening doors and guiding undergraduates to realize their full scholarly, professional, and personal potential brings her great joy.

Prior to joining the College of Engineering in November 2024, Kathleen served for fifteen years as the Assistant Director of the URI Honors Program, where she oversaw the Office of National Fellowships. For seven of those years, she also directed the Pre-Health Professions Advising Program and served as Chair of the URI Health Professions Advisory Committee. Before that, she worked for ten years as Assistant Director of URI’s renowned International Engineering Program. In recognition of her outstanding contributions to the University, Kathleen was honored with the 2023 Administrative Excellence Award from the URI Foundation.

Kathleen earned a Bachelor of Arts in History from Siena College in Loudonville, NY, studied abroad in Madrid, Spain, and later earned a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies from the University of Arizona. She also spent a year teaching at a bilingual preparatory school on the campus of Tec de Monterrey (Campus Sonora Norte), a prestigious engineering university in Mexico.

Sigrid Berka is the Executive Director of the International Engineering Program (IEP) at the University of Rhode Island, Professor of German and also the Director of the German IEP and the Chinese IEP. Dr. Berka is responsible for building academic programs with exchange partners abroad, internship placements for IEP’s dual degree students, corporate relations, and fundraising for the IEP. Bi-annually the IEP organizes the Colloquium on International Engineering Education.

Under Dr. Berka’s leadership, the IEP received NAFSA’s Senator Paul Simon Spotlight award for innovative campus internationalization (2011), and the Andrew Heiskell Award for study abroad (2012) by the Institute for International Education. She serves on the Provost’s Global Education Steering Committee. In her previous appointment as Managing Director of the MIT Germany program, she developed innovative collaborations between MIT students, faculty and German companies and research institutes as part of the MIT International Science & Technology Initiatives (MISTI).

From 2007-2009, she served as MIT Delegate for the Global Excellence Initiative (GEI-GEIP), a consortium of the best engineering schools world-wide with the mission to educate the global engineer, sponsored by Continental AG; Berka was educated at RWTH Aachen, Washington University, St. Louis and the University of California, Santa Barbara, and previously taught German Studies at Barnard College in New York.

Haibo He is the Robert Haas Endowed Chair Professor in Electrical Engineering at the Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA. He severed as the Department Chair from July 2017 to June 2023. His main research interest is computational intelligence, with a particular focus on neural networks, reinforcement learning, and data mining. He served/serves numerous capacities at the professional societies, including the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (2016 to 2021), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) ADCOM (2021-2023), IEEE CIS Fellow Committee (2018, 2019, 2022), International Neural Network Society (INNS) Board of Governors (2022-2024),General Chair of IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI’14, Orlando, Florida), among others. He was a recipient of the IEEE CIS “Outstanding Early Career Award,” National Science Foundation “Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award,” among others. He is a Fellow of IEEE.

Darko Ljubic, PhD

Assistant Teaching Professor of Chemical Engineering

Darko Ljubic is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering at the University of Rhode Island. With over a decade of experience in academia and specialized research, Dr. Ljubic focuses on polymers, organic electronics, and materials engineering.

Academic Background

Dr. Ljubic holds an extensive international educational portfolio:

• Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering (Polymer Engineering) from McMaster University.
• M.S. in Chemistry from Pittsburg State University.
• M.S. and B.S. in Polymeric Materials Engineering from the Faculty of Technology in Novi Sad.
• Bachelor Applied in Engineering from Belgrade Polytechnic.

Teaching & Professional Experience

Prior to his current role in Rhode Island, Dr. Ljubic spent ten years at McMaster University in various capacities, including Sessional Lecturer and Research Lab Manager. His teaching expertise spans several core disciplines:

• Polymer Science: Instructed courses in Polymer Reaction Engineering, Polymer Chemistry, and Introduction to Polymer Science.
• Applied Chemistry: Led courses in Industrial Chemistry and Advanced Laboratory Skills.
• Research Leadership: Served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and a Research Associate at the Kansas Polymer Research Center.

Research & Publications

His research contributions are well-documented in peer-reviewed journals, focusing on the development of UV-responsive organic thin-film transistors and high-performance polyurethane elastomers. His work frequently explores the integration of benzothiophene semiconductors and surface-modified graphene to improve dielectric and thermo-mechanical properties in modern materials.