Appointment of Jayathi Y. Murthy as Dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science

UCLA Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

To:   Administrative Officers, Deans, Department Chairs, Directors, Faculty and Staff in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Vice Chancellors

Dear Colleagues:

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Jayathi Y. Murthy as Dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science (HSSEAS), effective January 1, 2016.

Professor Murthy is the Ernest Cockrell Jr. Department Chair and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin (January 2012-present). She served as director of PRISM: NNSA Center for Prediction of Reliability, Integrity and Survivability of Microsystems (2008-2014). A member of the faculty at Purdue University from 2001 to 2011, Professor Murthy served as the Robert V. Adams Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering. At Carnegie Mellon University, she served as associate professor of mechanical engineering (1998-2001) and director of the Thermal Management, Electronics Cooling, and Packaging Laboratory Institute for Complex Engineered Systems (1999-2001). During her 1988-1998 employment at Fluent Inc., a leading vendor of CFD software, she developed the unstructured solution-adaptive finite volume methods underlying their flagship software Fluent, and the electronics cooling software package ICEPAK. More recently, her research has addressed sub-micron thermal transport, multiscale multiphysics simulations of MEMS and NEMS, and uncertainty quantification in these systems.

Professor Murthy received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota, an M.S. from Washington State University and a B. Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology. She is the recipient of many honors including the IBM Faculty Partnership Award 2003-2005, the 2009 ASME EPPD Woman Engineer of the Year Award, the 2012 ASME EPPD Clock Award and numerous best paper awards. In 2012, she was named a distinguished alumna of the Indian Institute of Technology. Professor Murthy serves on the editorial boards of Numerical Heat Transfer and International Journal of Thermal Sciences and is an editor of the 2nd edition of the Handbook of Numerical Heat Transfer. She is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the author of more than 280 technical publications. In addition, she has served on numerous national committees and panels on electronics thermal management and CFD.

I want to thank the search/advisory committee for assembling an outstanding pool of candidates and for its role in recruiting Jayathi. The committee was chaired by Joseph Rudnick, dean of the Division of Physical Sciences. Other members were: Asad Abidi – Distinguished Chancellor’s Professor, electrical engineering department; Jane Chang – William F. Seyer Professor of Materials Electrochemistry, chemical and biomolecular engineering department and associate dean, research and physical resources, HSSEAS; Linda Demer – professor of medicine, physiology and bioengineering and executive vice chair, department of medicine; Bruce Dunn – Nippon Sheet Glass Professor of Materials Science and Engineering; Ramon Gomez – senior technical director, Broadcom Corporation; Carlos Grijalva – professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience and associate dean, UCLA Graduate Division; Chih-Ming Ho – Ben Rich Lockheed Martin Chair in Advanced Aerospace Technologies, mechanical and aerospace engineering department; Eric Hoek – professor of civil and environmental engineering; Diana Huffaker – professor of electrical engineering and member of the California NanoSystems Institute and of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability; Richard Kaner – professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and of materials science and engineering; and Richard Korf – professor of computer science.

I also want to recognize and thank Dean Vijay Dhir for his distinguished leadership of the school since February 2002.

Chancellor Block and I are confident that HSSEAS will reach new heights under Jayathi’s leadership. Please join me in congratulating her and welcoming her to UCLA.

Sincerely,

Scott L. Waugh
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost