Leadership

Biomedical Engineering department head, Carnegie Mellon

Demographics - 48, married, no kids, wife is a biosciences professor at Carnegie Mellon. First in family to earn advanced degree. 

Education: BS in Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University; and MS in Mechanical Engineering & MD/PhD University of Michigan. Attends 4-5 professional conferences a year.

Goals - Beat a peer at Stanford to the punch in developing anti-rejection tissue bath for use in organ transplants. 

Pain - Keenly aware of of barriers to engineering for young men and women of color, tries to walk the talk in recruiting and hiring. Frustrated because he has an opening for a postdoc in his lab, but so far candidates are all male students from East and South Asia.

Media & device preference - Does most of his online reading on laptop, but occasionally reads an article on his phone if someone sends him a link. Reads NYT online, gets Nature at his office. Follows colleagues’ publications through LinkedIn Connections in the News service. Has a twitter account but doesn’t post.

Role & responsibility - In year 4 of a 5-year appointment as department chair. Oversees department with 23 core faculty and 17 adjuncts. Has enjoyed leadership role more than he thought he might. 20 years into academic career. Has been contacted by 2 other institutions in the past year trying to recruit him away. One seemed like a lateral move at best. The other was in a region he had no interest in moving to. 

Biography/scenario - Jabir is considering a collaboration with an old graduate school colleague, Ted, who’s now teaching at the the University of Texas at Austin. He and Ted had the same mentor at Michigan and worked in the lab together for three years while working on their respective dissertations. Ted’s work in medical polymers complements Jabir’s and has raised some intriguing possibilities for one of his current projects.

Associate Dean, Georgia Tech College of Engineering

Demographics

47, married, 2 kids. Husband is a stay-at-home dad. 

Education: BS Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Tech, MS Materials Science, Rice University, PhD Materials Science and Engineering, University of Texas, Austin.

Goals: Successfully lobby university administration to invest in a new characterization lab that will put Georgia Tech researchers in a better position to compete for grants from major national funding bodies.

Pain: Michelle has seen several rising academic stars leave Georgia Tech for universities that are investing aggressively in the kinds of equipment that help them win big grants. She’s been beating the drum for this kind of investment for almost a decade, but until very recently it fell on deaf ears.

Media and device preferences: Follows several news sources on facebook, gets a mix of highbrow and lowbrow media ranging from the Chronicle of Higher Education to IFLScience. Reads news primarily on phone in the moments between meetings.

Role and Responsibility: Associate dean for Research and Innovation and Elmer F. Pendleton Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. Michelle has been at Georgia Tech for 17 years and is in the third year of a 5-year administrative appointment. Principal investigator at Georgia Tech’s Center for Science and Technology of Advanced Materials and Interfaces. Research focus is on development of strong, lightweight metals and alloys. Current project involves a lightweight morphing metal that can adapt its friction properties to respond to changing environmental conditions. 

Bio/Scenario: Materials characterization equipment is a pretty dull topic for a lay audience.  Her Dean is on board with the infrastructure improvements she’s been advocating, but convincing University administrators and ultimately state lawmakers to allocate funds is a tougher sell.  She’s keenly aware of the importance of this investment, though, as she’s seen young rising stars in her field leave GT for competitor institutions with better infrastructure and tools.

Associate Dean, MIT

Demographics - 52, married, 2 kids (12 and 15), wife is an independent CPA. Skipped family vacation last summer because new job duties. Attends 3-4 professional conferences a year. 

Education: BS, electrical Engineering and computer science, MIT;  MS and PhD Stanford

Goals - Secure Department of Energy funding for a smart grid project Learn to play the banjo.

Pain - Never enough time. Seems like he spends 70% of his day in meetings related to administrative duties. Doesn’t get to spend as much time in the lab as he would like. Misses day-to-day interaction with students. 

Media & device preference - Reads news online daily, sometimes on laptop, sometimes on phone, usually between tasks and meetings. Gets an email digest from Chronicle of Higher Education and a news feed from MIT Technology Review. Gets the journal Nature and the IEEE Spectrum at home and usually reads Spectrum from cover to cover before the next month’s issue arrives. Doesn’t use social media.

Role & responsibility - Reports to dean, new appointment in first year on job, previously a dept chair for 5 years, in academia for 27 years. Oversees two departments - Electrical Engineering and  Computer Science. A total of 61 full-time faculty and 20 adjuncts.

Biography/scenario - Michael presented a paper on power grid technology at the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology  conference in Phoenix in June.  While there, he toured ASU’s Quantum Energy and Sustainable Solar Technologies (QESST) Center, a major research partnership with the NSF and the Department of Energy. Pondered what MIT might be able to accomplish if the sun shined more often in Boston.

Department chair, Stanford

Demographics: 67, divorced, 1 adult child.

Education: BS Computer Science and Math, Lewis & Clark College, MS Aerospace Engineering, Oregon State, PhD Aerospace Engineering, Caltech. Has long-standing professional relationship with NASA and spent a decade working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech. AIAA Journal Editor.

Goals: Recruit the best mid-career academics in the country and build a culture of collaboration in Stanford Aero that can sustain itself after he retires. 

Pain: Information overload. Thomas tries to limit incoming communication to things he absolutely needs to know. He feels distractions sap his ability to think creatively. 

Media and device preferences: No social media, uses a flip phone that he keeps in a briefcase. Checks it every few days to see if he has any voicemail. Wades through several hundred emails a day and wishes he could make them go away. 

Role and Responsibility:  In his 8th year as Department Chair in Aerospace Engineering, the second-largest department in Stanford’s College of Engineering.  Has two years left in his department chair appointment and plans to transition into emeritus status and retire after that. In addition to his lone remaining PhD student, considers himself a mentor to a dozen junior faculty he has hired in his time as chair. 

Bio/Scenario

Has a lot of space industry contacts and frequently consults on NASA projects.