New Dean of Science

To:       Executive Vice Presidents, Chancellors, Vice Presidents, Vice Provosts, Vice Chancellors, Deans, Directors and Heads of Schools, Divisions, Departments and Offices

From:   Deba Dutta, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Diversity

Re:       New Dean of Science

Date:   June 9, 2017

 

I am pleased to inform you that Patrick J. Wolfe, professor of statistics and computer science at University College London, has been selected as the next Frederick L. Hovde Dean of the College of Science at Purdue, effective July 17.

Patrick brings to Purdue a track record of academic leadership experience from a career spanning the broad mathematical sciences, computer science and engineering based at Cambridge, Harvard and University College London (UCL).  In 2015, after founding, externally funding and leading UCL’s flagship, cross-disciplinary Big Data Institute, he became founding member and deputy director of the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s $100M+ national institute for data science.

Patrick has demonstrated a great capacity for building multidisciplinary relationships and forging alliances with industry, government, other universities and institutions, and the nonprofit sector.  He is a strong advocate for gender equality, diversity and inclusion.  I am confident that Patrick will further enhance the excellence for which the College of Science and its faculty are well known.

I wish to thank the search advisory committee, co-chaired by Jay Akridge, Purdue’s Glenn W. Sample Dean of Agriculture, and Ei-ichi Negishi, the Herbert C. Brown Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, for an outstanding job conducting the international search for this important position.  I also want to acknowledge Craig Svensson, who has done an extraordinary job as the interim dean of the College of Science, and will continue in the position until July 16.  Craig’s superior organizational skills and his dedication to Purdue’s faculty and staff, made him the right choice to take on such a challenge, and I wish to extend to him my deepest personal gratitude.

Please join me in thanking dean Svensson and the search advisory committee.  I know you will also join me in welcoming dean Patrick J. Wolfe to the Boilermaker family.