University Professor Mung Chiang has been named Purdue University’s next Dean of the College of Engineering, effective July 1.
Chiang, the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education, was selected from three finalists to be the John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering. He will replace Leah Jamieson GS ’77, who will return to her position as a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue.
Purdue University President Mitch Daniels ’71, a former Governor of Indiana, called Chiang “one of the genuine superstars of American engineering and higher education,” in a press release.
“Dr. Chiang’s personal research achievements, entrepreneurial success record, and international reputation, combined with our recent major investments in our College of Engineering, truly positions us for world leadership," Daniels added.
Chiang received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics in 1999 and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2000 and 2003 from Stanford University. In 2004, Chiang joined the University as an assistant professor in electrical engineering and received tenure in 2008. In 2013, Chiang was named the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor.
Also in 2013, Chiang received the National Science Foundation's Alan T. Waterman Award, which is one of the highest honors for young scientists in the United States. He received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014 in the category of Natural and Social Sciences, as well as the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. In addition, Chiang received the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ Distinguished Teaching Award in 2016, and was the inaugural chairman of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council.
On campus, Chiang conducts research on communications, social, and economic networks. In 2011, Chiang published a paper titled “An Axiomatic Theory of Fairness in Resource Allocation,” and in 2013 co-authored a textbook titled “Smart Data Pricing.” In 2016, he released a book titled “The Power of Networks: Six Principles That Connect Our Lives.”
He also conducts research on video streaming, content distribution, cloud and data center networks, and information theory. Chiang holds approximately 20 U.S. patents, and is the co-founder of DataMi, Zoomi, and Smartiply, which are startups focused on mobile data, big data, and fog networking respectively.
Chiang is a founding board member of the Open Fog Consortium, which is a consortium of nonprofits, companies, and academics that promote fog computing and fog networking technologies. Other members include Cisco, Dell and Microsoft.
“Purdue’s College of Engineering is one of the strongest and one of the largest in the country,” Chiang said in the press release. “Its recent growth is remarkable, and its future even brighter. I am humbled by the honor to serve this outstanding college, one that is part of a public university under the visionary leadership of President Daniels.”
University professor of electrical engineering H. Vincent Poor GS ’77, who was the University's previous Dean of the School of Engineering, said in the press release that Chiang “excels at all he does.”
“I am confident that his unique combination of skills, his clarity of vision and his ability to work with people from across the academic enterprise will make him an outstanding dean at Purdue,” Poor added.
Jamieson announced that she was stepping down as Purdue’s Dean of Engineering in October 2016, and the search committee to replace her was led by R. Byron Pipes GS ’69, the John L. Bray Distinguished Professor of Engineering.
Chiang will become one of several former University professors and alumni named as a deans of engineering in the United States. Francis Doyle ’85, Lance Collins ’81, Alec Gallimore GS ’92, and former University Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering T. Kyle Vanderlick serve as the Deans of the School of Engineering at Harvard University, Cornell University, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and Yale University, respectively.
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