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Yu Wu and Chaomei Chen Department Head

Whiting School of Engineering

Established in 2019 by Yu Wu and Chaomei Chen

CHAOMEI CHEN, M.S. ’88 is a former financial industry business executive with expertise in risk management. She currently serves multiple technology companies as an advisor and board member. Previously, Chen was a chief risk officer at LendingClub, where she was responsible for the establishment and enhancement of the enterprise risk management organization. Previous positions include overseeing all risk management functions for the Washington Mutual (WaMu) credit card portfolio at JP Morgan Chase and serving as vice chair and chief credit officer at Providian Financial Services, where she was instrumental in its turnaround prior to its acquisition by WaMu. Chen’s experience also includes executive positions with Fleet Credit Card Services and PNC National Bank, as well as management positions with Citicorp, American Express, and Household Credit Services. During her career, she oversaw multi-billion dollar business and credit risk portfolios and directed the large-scale implementation of credit risk management, business risk management, collections, fraud prevention, BASEL implementation, and database marketing for operations, both domestic and international. Chen earned her B.S. in mathematics at China’s Southwest Jiaotong University and an MSE in mathematical science at Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering. She is an active member of the Whiting School Advisory Board and the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees.

YU WU, M.S. ’89, Ph.D. ’96, currently serves as a member of the Board of Overseers at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where he was also a research fellow from 2018 to 2019. He was a guest professor at China’s Jianghan University from 2012 to 2017, teaching U.S. history. He came to teaching after retiring from the U.S. financial industry in 2006. Since then, he had helped edit, translate, and publish a few of his father’s academic works. From 1994 to 1998, Wu worked for financial services, information companies, and banks, specializing in strategic planning and competitive analysis and holding positions such as analyst, manager, and director at Household Bank Credit Card Services, Fair Isaac Company, and PNC Bank Credit Card Services. From 1998 to 2006, he served as vice president at FleetBoston Bank Credit Services, Providian Financial Services, and Washington Mutual Card Services, where he was responsible for strategic initiatives and competitive intelligence. Winner of a Fulbright scholarship, Yu earned his Ph.D. in history at the Johns Hopkins University studying with advisor Jack P. Greene, Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus in the Humanities. He also received a B.A. and an M.A. in history from China’s Wuhan University, and an M.S. at the Johns Hopkins University.

Held by Fadil Santosa

FADIL SANTOSA, Ph.D., earned his B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of New Mexico in 1976, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics from the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign in 1977 and 1980, respectively. After two years as postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Cornell University, he was appointed to assistant professor in 1982. In 1985, he joined the faculty in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Delaware. He left Delaware in 1995 to take on the roles of professor and associate director of the Minnesota Center for Industrial Mathematics in the School of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota. At Minnesota, he was director of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications from 2008 to 2017. He held various visiting positions including at Cornell University, University of Trieste, University of Florence, and Exxon Mobil Corporate Strategic Research. Santosa joined Johns Hopkins University in 2020.

His current research focus is on optimal experiment design for inverse problems, modeling carbon capture, and electromagnetics on graphene. He holds two patents and is a fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics and of the American Mathematical Society. He is widely known for his efforts to bridge the gap between mathematical research in academia and industry.