When Dr. Sina Rabbany was appointed acting dean of SEAS, he had been founding director of the Bioengineering Program at Hofstra and had already established a reputation as a prolific researcher, with more than 60 publications and patents, in the areas of cardiovascular dynamics, biosensors, vascular biology, and tissue engineering/regenerative medicine. His work is also noteworthy for the number of undergraduate researchers he has directed, many of whom have gone on to obtain PhDs/MDs.

Dr. Rabbany joined Hofstra in 1990 as an assistant professor of engineering to create the Hofstra Bioengineering Program, the first on Long Island. Dr. Rabbany has received funding from numerous organizations, including the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, and the Office of Naval research. He was selected to be a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical & Biological Engineering in 2012.

Since taking on his current post, Dr. Rabbany has seen undergraduate enrollment in SEAS grow from 538 in Fall 2014 to 625 in Fall 2015 and to an estimated 700 in Fall 2016. Graduate enrollment in computer science has also increased from 30 to 50 in the same period. The co-op program, launched in 2015, already boasts approximately 100 companies eager to hire SEAS students for extended full-time paid work experience.