Dr. Cosmas Tzavelis is a Professor and George Fox Chair of Civil Engineering at The Cooper Union. He has been teaching the Structural Analysis and Design classes such as Introduction to Engineering Design, Structural Analysis I and II, Solid Mechanics, Steel and Concrete Design, Experimental Projects and Senior Design projects. He is the Faculty Advisor of the student ASCE club and has been recognized by the Cooper Union students for his passion and dedication towards their education.

Prof. Tzavelis has obtained his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics from Columbia University with his dissertation entitled "Seismic Reliability of Rigid Frame Structures”.  His research interests include Information Management in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (BIM etc), Innovative Bridge Design and learning from Nature as well as Structural Analysis of the human skeleton and joints.

Prof. Tzavelis is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of New York and consults local firms in Building Information Management and Structural Steel design. In the past he was involved in the Rehabilitation of the bottom lateral system of the Queensboro Bridge in NY, the issue of guidelines for the Inspection, Evaluation and Repair of the Bridges of New York City,  and the Design of the Day Center and Student Housing of the University of West Indies in Trinidad.

He has been elected to the Who’s Who Among American Teachers publication, nominated by the National Dean’s List students, honoring those special teachers who “took time to lead, inspire and demand excellence”. He  was Honorablly  mentioned and received an award for the design of the Bridge of the Future, at the Great Seto Bridge Memorial Center in Japan and received a Prize from the American Aluminum Association for the design of a prefabricated aluminum partitioning system.

Selected publications and Master’s thesis supervised include:  "An object-oriented xml database to share engineering data" ,  “Giving Meaning to Design Data Using XML” , “A Structural Engineer’s guide to using Revit Structures”,  "Effects of pre-stressing on the Structural Behavior of Stress-Ribbon Bridges”,  “A new approach in structural analysis using 3-d moment distribution and visual basic” , "An object oriented database management system for sharing engineering data", "An object-oriented approach to establish relationships between civil engineering building objects".

Nora Akawi is a Palestinian architect, and an assistant professor at The Cooper Union, New York. She focuses on erasure and bordering in settler colonialism and works at the intersection of architecture with border studies, cartography, and archive theory.  Prior to joining The Cooper Union, Nora taught at Columbia University’s GSAPP, where she was the director of Studio-X Amman since 2012, and the founding director of the Janet Abu-Lughod Library and Seminar since 2015. She curated Al Majhoola Min Al-Ard (this earth’s unknown) at the Biennale d’Architecture d’Orléans (2019), and co-curated Sarāb: Wadi Rum, a festival of experimental electronic music and performance from the Arab worlds (2019), and Friday Sermon at the Biennale Architettura in Venice (2018). She co-edited the books Friday Sermon (2018) and Architecture and Representation: The Arab City (2016). Together with Eduardo Rega Calvo, in 2019 she co-founded the interdisciplinary research and design studio Interim Projects.

Professor Akawi is on sabbatical for the 2025-26 academic year. 

Professor Amanda Simson joined the Chemical Engineering faculty in September 2017. Her background is in using heterogeneous catalysis for alternative energy technologies and air pollution control. Currently, she is working on off-grid power production using locally sourced fuels. 

As a teacher, Professor Simson is dedicated to improving educational opportunities for students, particular in STEM. She enjoys developing game and creating engaging science curricula for kids as part of the Science Ninjas team. Professor Simson is also part of an NSF funded project developing biotech curricula for community college students, with collaborators at Bronx Community College. Prior to her Ph.D. work, Simson taught middle school mathematics for three years, two of which were with the Team for America Miami Corp. 

Professor Simson received her bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. from Columbia University Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. Her graduate work at Columbia focused on developing efficient hydrogen production process for PEM fuel cells and was sponsored by BASF. After her Ph.D. she spent two years developing hydrogen production technologies for Watt Fuel Cell in Port Washington, NY. 

Professor Simson currently teaches the Thermodynamics sequence and a graduate level elective in Environmental Catalysis.

Primarily grounded in animation and the moving image, Lucy Raven’s multidisciplinary practice also incorporates still photography, installation, sound, and performative lecture. Her work has been exhibited in solo presentations at such venues as the Serpentine Gallery, London (2016–17); Centre vox de l’image contemporaine, Montreal (2015); Portikus, Frankfurt (2014); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2012–13); and Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (2010), as well as in numerous group exhibitions around the world. Raven holds a BFA in studio art and a BA in art history from the University of Arizona, Tucson (2000), and an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2008). With Victoria Brooks and Evan Calder Williams, she is a founding member of the moving image research and production collective Thirteen Black Cats.