Purdue College of Science highlights and strategic goals- Summer 2023
08-02-2023
Greetings from the Purdue College of Science! It is an exciting time as we near the fall semester, and with the continued rise in applications, the College of Science expects the largest incoming class in college history. The academic profile of admitted students is exceptional with average ACT and SAT scores of 32 and 1400+, in addition to 45 new Emerging Leader Science Scholars who have accepted their admission into the College. Meanwhile, the current cohort of 5600 undergraduate students continue to excel with 44% of students receiving both semester honors (3.5 semester GPA), as well as being named to the Dean’s list (3.5 cumulative GPA) last spring. The College continues to recruit top graduate students from around the world with many obtaining external fellowship support. In 2022, forty College of Science graduate students were selected for prestigious external awards including NSF and NIH Fellowships, NASA FINESST, Ford, and Rolls Royce Fellowships.
From a research perspective, our record-breaking year of proposals in 2022 is putting the college on track for a record-breaking year in research awards for 2023. The college is on track to double research awards in just three years. Recent and noteworthy list of major research accomplishments include the launch of the NSF Center for Quantum Technologies, and a new AI-Institute on Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and OperatioN (ACTION), building on Purdue's strength in cybersecurity.
The above accomplishments are noteworthy given the pace of faculty hiring in the College of Science. The college is continuing to grow our faculty with a Data Science cluster across Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science. In addition to our Quantum Information faculty hiring cluster across Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics and Astronomy, and Chemistry, the College of Science has started a new cluster hire in Advanced Materials. We had a record number of early career faculty awards recognized this spring (15 NSF CAREER awards, 6 NSF CRII, 2 Sloan Fellowships, 4 NIH New Investigator awards, a NASA Early CAREER Fellowship, and a DOE Early CAREER fellowship). Faculty from Biological Sciences, Dr. Richard Kuhn and Dr. Zhao-Qing Luo, were recipients of the Morrill and McCoy Awards. Dr. Petros Drineas and Dr. Rodrigo Banuelos were named fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and Dr. Lucy Flesch, Senior Associate Dean in the College of Science, won the Paul J. Silver Award from the American Geophysical Union, in addition to many other faculty awards.
In coordination with the College of Science, Purdue is growing a data science educational ecosystem to prepare all Purdue students to invent, innovate, and lead in a data-driven world. A complete renovation of what was formerly Schleman Hall will be a new Hall of Data Science set to open for the fall semester in 2024. This new facility will serve as a modern space to educate students at scale on the best practices of collaborative and interdisciplinary data science and artificial intelligence, in addition to attracting and retaining top researchers and faculty who will develop the next generation of technological breakthroughs.
Lastly, with the recent promotion of Provost Patrick Wolfe, the college is searching for its next leader. A search committee, led by Dr. Richard Kuhn, welcomed six candidates to campus during the month of July. Presently, Dr. Jean Chmielewski from the Department of Chemistry is serving as Interim Dean. These are just a few of the amazing developments ongoing in the College of Science. The future looks incredibly bright, and we look forward to sharing all to come in the next academic year! Hail Purdue and Boiler Up!