Dean's Office
Senior Associate Deans
James Plummer, Dean
Department: Electrical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering by courtesy
Jim Plummer is the Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of Engineering and the John M. Fluke Professor of Electrical Engineering. He has led the school since 1999. In 2002 he helped create the Department of Bioengineering, which is jointly run with the School of Medicine. Prior to becoming dean, he served as the chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering. Dean Plummer's research interests are in silicon integrated circuit devices and technology. He works on computer simulation tools for modeling new device structures and on experimental fabrication to demonstrate new silicon devices. He is the author or co-author of over 400 publications and holds several US patents. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the IEEE and serves on several boards of public semiconductor companies.
Curtis Frank, Senior Associate Dean, Faculty and Academics
Department: Chemical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering by courtesy, Chemistry by courtesy
Curt Frank is the W.M. Keck, Sr., Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Academics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and serves on the editorial boards of Polymer and Polymers for Advanced Technologies. Frank is the 1990 Winner of the C.M.A. Stine Award of the Division of Materials Science and Engineering of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. In 1993 he was Chairman of Division of Polymer Chemistry of the American Chemical Society.
Brad Osgood, Senior Associate Dean, Student Affairs
Department: Electrical Engineering
After receiving his PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1980, Brad Osgood joined the faculty at Harvard as a Benjamin Peirce Assistant Professor of Mathematics. In 1985 he moved to Stanford University where he is now a Professor of Electrical Engineering and the Senior Associate Dean for Student Affairs in the School of Engineering. At Stanford, he has received the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Helen and Peter Bing Centennial Professorship. He is a mathematician by training and applies techniques from analysis and geometry to various engineering problems. He is interested in problems in imaging, pattern recognition, and signal processing. His research focuses on topics in complex analysis, differential geometry and signal processing.
Bernd Girod, Senior Associate Dean, Online Learning and Professional Development
Department: Electrical Engineering, Computer Science by courtesy
Bernd Girod, a professor of electrical engineering and (by courtesy) computer science, is Senior Associate Dean for Online Learning and Professional Development and the Stanford Director of the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Stanford and Columbia. Girod is a key figure in the type of multimedia technology that has revolutionized online education and a pioneer of video streaming technology. His research has led to seminal contributions in video compression and communication, networked media systems and most recently, image and video search As an entrepreneur, Professor Girod has been involved in several startup ventures, among them Polycom, Vivo Software, 8x8 and RealNetworks. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a EURASIP Fellow and a member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina). Girod has authored or co-authored one major textbook, five monographs, and some 500 journal articles and conference papers. His current research interests are in the area of networked media systems.
Laura Breyfogle, Senior Associate Dean, External Relations
Laura Breyfogle is the Senior Associate Dean for External Relations for the School of Engineering. In this capacity, Breyfogle leads school-wide efforts in Development, Alumni Relations, and Marketing and Communications. Her 25-year career at Stanford also encompassed development positions in the Stanford Engineering School, the Stanford Business School and the Stanford Office of Development. Prior to Stanford, Breyfogle worked in development at the San Jose Symphony and the San Francisco Ballet. She earned her BS in English Literature from Carleton College and her MBA from the Anderson School at the University of California at Los Angeles. She currently is a board member for the Palo Alto Partners in Education (PiE) Advisory Council.
Chairs/Directors
Charbel Farhat, Chair, Aeronautics and Astronautics
Department: Aeronautics and Astronautics, Mechanical Engineering
Charbel Farhat is the Vivian Church Hoff Professor of Aircraft Structures and Director of the Army High Performance Computing Research Center. His research interests are in computational sciences for the design and analysis of complex systems in aerospace, mechanical, and naval engineering. He is designated as an ISI Highly Cited Author by the ISI Web of Knowledge. He was knighted by the Prime Minister of France in the Order of Academic Palms and awarded the Medal of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques. He has received many other academic distinctions including the Lifetime Achievement Award from ASME, the Structures, Structural Dynamics and Materials Award from AIAA, the John von Neumann Medal from USACM, the Gordon Bell Prize and Sidney Fernbach Award from IEEE, the IACM Award from IACM, and the Modeling and Simulation Award from DoD. He is a Fellow of AIAA, ASME, IACM, SIAM, and USACM.
Norbert Pelc, Chair, Bioengineering
Department: Bioengineering, Radiology, Electrical Engineering by courtesy
Norbert Pelc is chair of the Department of Bioengineering. His primary research interests are in the physics, engineering, and mathematics of diagnostic imaging and the development of applications of this imaging technology. His current work focuses on computed tomography, specifically in methods to improve the information content and image quality and to reduce the radiation dose from these examinations. He holds doctorate and master degrees in Medical Radiological Physics from Harvard University and a BS from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He served on the first National Advisory Council of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the NIH. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.
Eric Shaqfeh, Chair, Chemical Engineering
Department: Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
Eric Shaqfeh is the Lester Levi Carter Professor as well as a professor of chemical engineering and mechanical engineering at Stanford. He became chair of the chemical engineering department in 2011. His awards include the APS Francois N. Frenkiel Award, the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, the Camile and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the Bingham medal from the Society of Rheology. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and served as an Associate Editor of Physics of Fluids since 2006. He has authored or co-authored over 150 publications in the general area of complex fluids and non-Newtonian fluid mechanics. He received his BSE in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and his MS and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.
Stephen Monismith, Chair, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Geological & Environmental Sciences by courtesy
Stephen Monismith is the Obayashi Professor in the School of Engineering and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research in environmental and geophysical fluid dynamics is focused on the application of fluid mechanics principles to the analysis of flow processes operating in rivers, lakes, estuaries, and the oceans. Flows that involve physical-biological interactions are of particular interest to him.
Jennifer Widom, Chair, Computer Science
Department: Computer Science, Electrical Engineering
Jennifer Widom is the Fletcher Jones Professor and chair of the Computer Science Department. She received her Bachelor's degree from the Indiana University School of Music in 1982 and her Computer Science Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1987. She was a Research Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center before joining the Stanford faculty in 1993. Her research interests span many aspects of nontraditional data management. She is an ACM Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; she received the ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award in 2007 and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2000; she has served on a variety of program committees, advisory boards, and editorial boards. Her research spans all aspects of nontraditional data management.
Abbas El Gamal, Chair, Electrical Engineering
Department: Electrical Engineering
Abbas El Gamal is Hitachi America Professor in the School of Engineering and chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering. A pioneer in the areas of network information theory and field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) and a key figure in the development of CMOS image sensors, he has been on the electrical engineering faculty since 1981. His academic contributions have spanned information theory, wireless networks, integrated circuit design and design automation, and imaging devices and systems. In his primary field, network information theory, El Gamal studies the performance limits of communication and computing networks and develops algorithms and protocols to achieve these limits. He developed the standard academic course on network information theory and co-authored the field’s first textbook, Network Information Theory. A Fellow of the IEEE, El Gamal has received several honors and awards for his work, most recently the 2012 Claude E. Shannon Award—the highest award in information theory. He has also played key roles in several Silicon Valley companies.
Peter Glynn, Chair, Management Science and Engineering
Department: Management Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering by courtesy
Peter W. Glynn is the chair of the Department of Management Science and Engineering and the Thomas Ford Professor of Engineering. He holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Previously he was deputy chair of Department of Management Science and Engineering and director of the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of INFORMS and of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, a co-winner of best publication awards from the INFORMS Simulation Society, and a co-winner of a best publication award from the INFORMS Applied Probability Society, and co-winner of the John von Neumann Theory Prize from INFORMS. His research interests lie in simulation, computational probability, queueing theory, statistical inference for stochastic processes, and stochastic modeling.
Robert Sinclair, Chair, Materials Science and Engineering
Department: Materials Science and Engineering
Robert Sinclair is Charles M. Piggot Professor in the School of Engineering and the chair of the department of Materials Science and Engineering. He received his BS and PhD degrees in Materials Science from Cambridge University. After holding research positions at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the Stanford faculty in 1977. He has been directing Stanford Nanocharacterization Lab since 2000. His has received numerous awards including the Robert Lansing Hardy Gold Medal of the Metallurgical Society of the AIME, the Eli Franklin Burton Award of the Electron Microscopy Society of America, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and the Marcus E. Grossman Award of the American Society for Metals. He has also received an award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Stanford. He is very active in several professional societies and in the organization of symposia and workshops on electron microscopy. Using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, Sinclair studies microelectronic and magnetic thin film microstructure.
Friedrich Prinz, Chair, Mechanical Engineering
Department: Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering
Fritz Prinz is the Robert Bosch Chair of Mechanical Engineering and the Finmeccanica Professor in the School of Engineering, teaching in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. He obtained his PhD in Physics at the University of Vienna, Austria. His students model and prototype nanoscale structures to understand the physics of electrical energy conversion and storage. Prinz' students are exploring the relation between size, composition, and the kinetics of charge transfer. They are also interested in learning from nature, in particular by studying the electron transport chain in plant cells. The Prinz team employs a wide range of nano-fabrication technologies to build and evaluate prototype structures. Such technologies include atomic layer deposition, scanning probe microscopy, and impedance spectroscopy. In addition, the group uses molecular scale modeling to gain insights into the nature of charge separation and recombination processes.
Department: Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Mechanical Engineering by courtesy, Civil and Environmental Engineering by courtesy
Margot Gerritsen is director of the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, an associate professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering and has a courtesy appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her main research interest is in the design and analysis of efficient numerical solution methods for partial differential equations that arise in fluid dynamics. Her PhD thesis work emphasized mathematical techniques. After her PhD work, her focus shifted to actual engineering applications.
