Welcome to our 6 new full-time IET faculty members for Fall 2022

NOVA IET is pleased to announce our new faculty team members: Ronnie Dasgupta, Aresgul Cuhader, Mike Hon, Abid Mahmoud, Bryce Summers, and Farzan Soroushi. Bios below:

Ronnie Dasgupta

Ronnie Dasgupta brings over 15 years of experience in Electrical Engineering and Control Systems to Northern Virginia Community College. He has transitioned from Control Systems to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Science.  Before joining NVCC, Ronnie founded a Tech Work Force Development company and contracted out with various academic institutions in the DC-Maryland-Virginia Regions. His objective was to coordinate industry and academia so that technical job training and employment placement are streamlined. Prior to his entrepreneurial venture, he worked as an engineer for the defense industry and has experience in intellectual property.

Ronnie holds multiple certifications in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University. He also has an industrial FE Certification from South Carolina State Board of Registration for Professional Engineers. He obtained his MS in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, MS in Electrical Engineering from Clemson University, BS in Electrical Engineering from Clemson University, and BS in Physics from College of Charleston.

Ronnie is Honorably Discharged from the US Marine Corps Reserves. During his free time, he enjoys competitive tennis and cross-fit.

Aresgul Cuhader

Dr Aysegul Cuhadar received her Doctor of Philosophy in Electronic Systems Engineering from the University of Essex, UK. She has extensive subject matter expertise in data science, machine learning, computer vision and high-performance computing, and has published several papers on these fields. She was a full-time faculty of computer engineering at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses in the department and supervising students for their research projects. She serves as an Adjunct Professor of data analytics and provides consulting services to a cybersecurity and IT company as a program manager.

Aysegul is a senior member of IEEE and volunteers as the Vice Chair of Washington section promoting both academia and practice, and managing the local section’s special award process at high school Science Fairs.

In her free time, Aysegul likes to read, hike with her dog, and travel. 

Mike Hon

Abid Mahmoud

Abid is a first-generation immigrant, and a proud graduate of NOVA.  He started his U.S. educational journey at NOVA in 1987 taking English as a Second Language (ESL) courses. He went on to earn two associate degrees at NOVA, one in information technology and the other in computer science, a bachelor’s degree in business and has earned two master’s degrees, one in Business and the other in Information Technology Management from Western Governor’s University.

He was offered an opportunity to work at NOVA 23 years ago as and Open Computer Lab Coordinator where he taught classes alongside working in the Computer Lab.  Prior to Coming to NOVA, Abid worked in financial centers’ IT departments.

Amid enjoys seeing his students progress and succeed in life.

Bryce Summers

Trained as a Computer Scientist and Artist, Bryce enjoys teaching programming classes, where he builds supportive learning environments, and creating art, where he tries to make abstract concepts more visible. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and a M.S. degree in Integrated Digital Media from New York University.

Bryce has been actively involved in programming education since 2015 and joined NOVA’s Information And Engineering Technologies (IET) department as an Adjunct Professor in the Spring of 2019. At NOVA, he has taught a variety of programming courses in software design, C++, and Python. He enjoys developing authentic assessments and automatic testing programs for student written code.

Outside of his work at NOVA, Bryce has been running a private consulting practice since 2016, where he primarily solves computational geometry problems, writes compilers, and other algorithm design tasks. His clients range from individuals to large companies like Autodesk.

In his spare time, Bryce enjoys lake kayaking, hiking with a companion, watching the land roll by on long train journeys, spending time with friends and family members, creating portraits of people he cares about, building castles and dog bone sculptures out of sand, crafting theme parks in the Roller Coaster Tycoon computer game, playing his bassoon, visiting his friends who have moved throughout the country, playing the power grid board game on his birthday each, reading comics from South Korea and Japan, and reading fun books on compilers and data structures.

When blending work and play, Bryce enjoys creating illustrations related to programming and has created some comic pages over the years. His most recent story was a narrative about a buffer overflow attack where gold is stolen from a passenger on a train due to a faulty protocol.

Farzan Soroushi

Farzan has 35 years of experience in higher education teaching/administration and IT industry. He started his career as CEO/owner of a software development company focusing on development of applications for the higher education industry.

He has extensive hands-on experience in programming languages, database systems, data analytics, and software engineering. His passion is education and he takes pride in seeing students succeed in their educational and professional goals. His hobbies are walking and playing tennis. In his spare time he provides math and computer tutoring to special needs students as a volunteer in his community

Farzan has a B.S in Applied Mathematics, an M.S in Computer Science, and has completed Ph.D. requirements in Information Technology at George Mason University.