Love & Stem

When Weili Wu and Dingzhu Du sit down to have dinner, the conversation is likely to be a lively one about big data or other trending topics in computer science.

“Even when we come back home, we continue and want to finish because we can’t finish everything in the daytime,” Wu said.

The pair met in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. When Wu completed her PhD in 2002, she joined UT Dallas, moving with their young children and her parents, while Du stayed in Minnesota and served as a program director at the National Science Foundation.

It was a challenging time for Wu, as both a parent and a junior faculty member working on tenure. The University was instrumental in recruiting Du as a professor and co-director of the lab.

“The dean and the department chair provided a lot of the help to make this happen,” she said.

Their three grown children are following their parents into the “family business,” pursuing PhDs in business school for careers in academia. Wu said it’s the natural result of growing up with professor parents who work together and talk about it at home.

“When our kids were very small, they heard about this paper or that research. And they also know what being a professor, working in academia, what the life looks like,” she said. “I didn’t purposely influence my kids, but that’s because from the time they were very young, they have lived in this environment.”

Wu said being a couple means she and Du understand each other deeply — a professional advantage, she added.

“If there’s a conflict, we can find a good way to solve that,” she said. “In that, we can make the work very efficient.”

When Tonya and Leonard Griffin met in a Dallas high school, it wasn’t an instant connection. She first learned of Leonard from her sister — and Tonya observed him from a distance.

“I was not very warm and friendly,” she recalled. “But then as I watched him and how he interacted with people, I warmed up because I saw the nature of his character. And it was beautiful. He was a nice guy.”

The Griffins started dating and have been together ever since — he proposed to her at church in front of 600 people — and they have two daughters and four grandchildren. Their connection to UT Dallas began when Tonya joined the University in 2009; Leonard followed four years later. They both love the buzz of possibility on campus, the excitement of celebrating student achievement.

“It’s a real uplifting place to work,” said Tonya, who didn’t feel the same way in her previous corporate jobs.

She has witnessed the School’s growth in her work managing budgets for the school.

“We’re always trying to find ways to improve things and adapt and adjust to the changes,” she said.

The Griffins start their day together commuting to work, and they often meet up during the day for a lunch or a coffee break.

“If we’re having a bad day and need some positive energy, we have each other to meet with,” Tonya said.

Leonard agreed.

“I’ll meet her up at the corner of one of the buildings, grab her hands and we just walk and talk — and even better, if we can get something really bad to eat,” he said. “It’s just that there’s nothing like someone that gets you, someone that’s got your back, sincerely.”

When DJ Zakhidov and Guzal Fayzullaeva met on an arranged coffee date when he was visiting relatives in Uzbekistan 10 years ago, they were both doing family members a favor. But to their surprise, the sparks flew.

Zakhidov had to return home to Dallas two days later. But within three months they were married, and a year later, they were living together in Dallas.

UT Dallas has always been a second home for Zakhidov. His father Dr. Anvar Zakhidov is a professor of physics and co-founder of the Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute at UT Dallas. His mother, Nadira, was a web specialist in the Eugene McDermott Library.

Zakhidov started working at the university in 2012. He said watching his father’s commitment to building the institute inspires his own journey into the metaverse, developing education simulations using augmented and virtual reality tools. Fayzullaeva said after noticing how happily immersed Zakhidov was in groundbreaking work, she joined UT Dallas in finance operations last year “to be a part of something big.”

Now with two small children and her mother and sister’s family living nearby, their University roots are growing deeper.

“UT Dallas has always provided a strong foundation for trying new things, for being creative or exploring,” Zakhidov said. “It provides all the support and encouragement for anybody that’s wanting to try. There’s just some kind of a unifying spirit, and it feels like a place that’s on a rise.”

Clark Meyer and Heather Hayenga go to work every day with a shared, deeply personal drive to engineer medical cures.

The two met in 2008 as bioengineering graduate students at Texas A&M University while working in adjoining labs. They’ve been researchers together ever since.

“It’s rewarding and encouraging to have a partner not only in life but also in research,” Hayenga said. “Having someone you’re so like-minded and similar with, you can live life to the fullest and you can also do research to the fullest.”

Hayenga’s father passed away in her arms from a heart attack when she was an undergraduate student — a motivating force behind her decision to pursue cardiovascular research.

In graduate school, she and Meyer began researching the growth and remodeling of atherosclerotic arteries, work that continues. They combine Meyer’s expertise in finite element modeling and Hayenga’s in pathophysiology. Funding includes a Research Project Grant (R01) from the National Institutes of Health.

In 2014, not long after joining the Jonsson School, Hayenga learned she had a solitary fibrous tumor caused by an extremely rare form of genetic cancer that’s akin to sarcoma. There is no cure, only spot treatments.

The pair got to work with a research partner to find ways to use gene editing to reverse the mutation. It works really well — in theory. But in practice, delivery is proving less efficient. So they keep pushing forward, aware of what’s at stake but finding strength in a shared purpose.

“It sharpens your focus because it couldn’t feel more important,” Meyer said.

With a toddler and a newborn, there are days Kianoosh Yousefi and Leili Izaditame don’t know which end is up.

“I need a full week just to recover from two days on the weekend,” said Yousefi, adding that Izaditame is home with a cold their daughter Rira brought home from day care.

The couple joined UT Dallas in January 2023, and their weekdays are filled with teaching and research. Yousefi’s research group, the Flow Dynamics and Turbulence Laboratory, studies air-sea energy fluxes to help forecasters better predict extreme weather and plan oceanic wind-turbine placement. Izaditame studies river and coastal soil pollution and their relationship to sea level rise and aquatic pollution.

The two met in 2015 in an English-language class in Tehran while preparing for their oral exams. Both were in the process of applying for graduate programs abroad. They moved to the United States together later that year and married there in 2016.

As early career scientists, they discuss the challenges they face in their work. Mentoring graduate students who aren’t much younger than they are has led to some self-reflection, Yousefi said.

“I’m a workaholic. If you ask my wife, she would say,‘ He works 24/7,’” he said. “She tries to remind me that you should not expect the same thing that you expect from yourself from other people.”

Research ideas are always running in the background, he added, and the boundary between work and life can be thin. With closely related research pursuits, someday, when time allows, the two may collaborate.

“Having a person that has a clear understanding of that as a partner is really important,” Yousefi said. “It’s really helpful to resolve a lot of issues or challenges.”