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Professor Amin Salehi-Khojin serves as the Interim Executive Director of the Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity. He is the inaugural William T. Solomon Chair of Mechanical Engineering at èßäÊÓƵapp's Lyle School of Engineering, where he also serves as the Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department. Before joining èßäÊÓƵapp, Prof. Salehi-Khojin was a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a University Scholar of the University of Illinois system, and held a joint appointment with Argonne National Laboratory. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Clemson University and completed four years of postdoctoral studies in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He has secured over $15 million in grants and served as the principal investigator for multiple federal projects, including those funded by DOE EarthShot, DOE-EERE, ARPA-E, NSF-EFRI, NSF-DMREF, and NSF-CBET.

Jasleen Dhillon serves as the Assistant Director of the Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity where she is responsible for the day-to-day leadership of the Institute. Prior to this role, Jasleen was an air quality analyst with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), where she was responsible for air quality modeling and analyses as part of the permitting process. Her time at TCEQ provided her with a deep understanding of air quality issues in Texas and fueled her passion for seeking sustainable solutions, particularly in underrepresented and under-resourced communities. Jasleen holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science from èßäÊÓƵapp and is currently pursuing a Master's in Sustainability and Development at èßäÊÓƵapp’s Lyle School of Engineering.

is a Marketing Specialist at , a management consulting firm in Dallas. Prior to joining the marketing department, she worked as an Associate Consultant where she led various organizational change management initiatives in IT departments at two Fortune 500 companies. She graduated cum laude from Southern Methodist University in 2019 with majors in journalism, fashion media and political science; and minors in law & legal reasoning and history of visual & performing arts.

Outside of the office, she is a member of Genesis Young Leaders and volunteers through the Junior League of Dallas. She enjoys writing, traveling, and taking classes through èßäÊÓƵapp’s interdisciplinary Graduate Liberal Studies program.

Valecia is a former Executive Officer from GM Financial services who served 19 years in the captive lending financial service industry. She focused on aligning strategic priorities with the company’s core values while mitigating compliance and regulatory risk. Valecia served as a council member for GM Financial employee rewards and recognition program and as a member of the first Diversity and Inclusion Council. is an MBA candidate at Southern Methodist University in the Cox School of Business, specializing in Strategy and Entrepreneurship. She serves as President of the Cox Graduate Entrepreneurship Club and the President of the Cox Graduate Women in Business. Valecia has been recognized as an award recipient for the Cox Legacy and Cox Dean’s Circle Business Leadership Center. As well as a recipient of the Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation 2021 and 2022 for her leadership role in supporting entrepreneurs in their early-stage ventures. Valecia is a senior advisor to entrepreneurs whose focus is to guide them to a viable business model with scalable solutions. She holds a seat as a member of the board of directors for One i/e, a non-profit organization supporting entrepreneurial ventures.

Rutuja is a Research Assistant at the Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity. She explores and works with Dr. Jessie Marshall Zarazaga and Dr. Eva Csaky on topics of GIS & participatory community mapping and creating a database of startups that work towards climate-smart economic development. Rutuja worked for four years in sustainable education as a Program Manager and Research Associate at Munich Business School, University of Applied Sciences for Business Administration in Germany before moving to Dallas.  She earned her B.Tech in Urban Planning from the College of Engineering Pune (COEP), India, and MSc in Sustainable Resource Management from the Technical University in Munich (TUM), Germany.  Her passion for sustainability encouraged her to pursue a Masters in Sustainability and Development at èßäÊÓƵapp’s Lyle School of Engineering.

Rebecca is the Program Manager at the Hunt Institute and a current graduate student in the Masters in Sustainability & Development program at Southern Methodist University. After graduating with a BS in International Business Management in 2012, she worked as a Sales and Training Manager for an International Company across Oceania, Southeast Asia, and the United States of America. Having made Dallas her home, she began actively seeking organizations that were involved in the climate and sustainability movement. Now an advocate for food sustainability and justice, Rebecca hopes to make positive impact in our regional and worldwide food systems.

Working across the boundaries of urbanism, landscape mapping, and public engagement, Zarazaga explores ways to connect culture and community to place. Using GIS and participatory community mapping, she explores the impact of civil and environmental choices on the design of communities. Her research spans education and practice, working on the integration of community research into project-based learning. Her work overlaps areas of GIS mapping, global sustainable urbanism, design and creativity. She undertook a Fulbright in Valparaíso, Chile, to investigate, and map, devices of landscape as inspirations for the orders of community space.  Jessie earned her Ph.D. in Applied Science in Engineering at èßäÊÓƵapp, a BA and MA in architecture from Cambridge University, and a BA in Design from Williams College. She is a Registered Architect with the RIBA.