Team | ITA

Dwight Streit is a distinguished Professor of Materials Science Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Director of the UCLA Engineering Institute for Technology Advancement. Prior to joining UCLA in 2010, he was Vice President and Technical Fellow at Northrop Grumman Corporation and TRW Space and Electronics. He joined TRW in 1986 and Northrop Grumman in 2002, upon the acquisition of TRW. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the NASA Space Foundation Technology Hall of Fame. He has over 350 technical publications and conference presentations with 22 U.S. and 10 international patents. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA in 1986 and was the UCLA Engineering Alumnus of the Year in 2003.

AZAR NAZERI

Azar Nazeri is the Senior Technology Strategist for the UCLA Engineering Institute for Technology Advancement (ITA), and manages the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps™) program at UCLA. Before joining the ITA, she was Research Manager of the Education and Energy Research Collaboration (EERC) between the University of Maryland and the Petroleum Institute of Abu Dhabi UAE for seven years. There, she was responsible for coordinating the activities of a multi-million dollar research and education collaboration between the two universities. Dr. Nazeri also has over fifteen years of experience as a research scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and as a Program Manager at the Office of Naval Research (ONR), where she oversaw vital Naval technology developments and materials research programs. Dr. Nazeri received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from UCLA in 1989.

MELIHA BULU-TACIROGLU

Meliha Bulu-Taciroglu is a specialist in finance and economics education and has been teaching for the Technology Management Technical Breadth Program at UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering since 2011. She recently developed a course for the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA called “Entrepreneurship and Finance for Environmental Scientists.” Dr. Bulu-Taciroglu also continuously collaborates with active entrepreneurs, corporations, and non-profit organizations. She holds a B.S. from the Middle East Technical University in Economics, a M.A. from Boston College in Economics, and a M.S. in Mathematics and Ph.D. (ABD) in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.