Lundstrom named interim dean for the College of Engineering

Mark Lundstrom

Jay Akridge, Purdue University’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and diversity, has announced the appointment of Mark Lundstrom as interim dean of the College of Engineering, effective July 1. Lundstrom will step in for Dean Mung Chiang, who has been named the 13th president of Purdue.

Chiang will start his new role as president on Jan. 1. He will step down as dean of the College of Engineering on June 30 to focus on his continued role as executive vice president for strategic initiatives and on the transition to his new position.

Lundstrom, the Don and Carol Scifres Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, served as acting dean from December 2019 to December 2020 while Chiang was on an Intergovernmental Personnel Act appointment with the U.S. Department of State.

A member of the Purdue faculty since 1980, Lundstrom began his career as an integrated circuit process development and manufacturing engineer. His research and teaching at Purdue have focused on the physics, modeling and simulation of semiconductor devices. Lundstrom was founding director of the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology, a multi-university initiative with a mission to accelerate the evolution of nanoscience to nanotechnology by connecting those who develop simulations to those who use them to analyze experiments and design devices. 

He sits on the executive committee of the American Semiconductor Academy and is a member of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation’s Accelerating Microelectronics Production and Development Task Force. Lundstrom is a life fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

“We are grateful to Mark Lundstrom for once again answering the call to lead the College of Engineering,” Akridge said. “He is a universally respected researcher, educator and leader, and I know the college, with his guidance, will continue to perform at the highest levels of excellence as we search for a new dean.”

The search process for the new dean will begin this summer. The Search Advisory Committee will be co-chaired by Alexandra Boltasseva, the Ron and Dotty Garvin Tonjes Professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Dan DeLaurentis, professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Nominations for Search Advisory Committee members are due by the close of business on June 30, to Ruth Ann Weiderhaft at weiderhaft@purdue.edu.