Active 1966 - 1991; Recalled 2009 - 2022

After earning his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton, Dr. David Miller had several choices - to go into academia or industry. He chose to come to a newly forming university, the University of California San Diego. He selected UC San Diego because his senior mentor at Princeton, John Fenn, knew several of the distinguished senior faculty who were founding the interdisciplinary engineering sciences at UCSD. He felt that Dr. Miller, with research interests in engineering physics, would grow here at UC San Diego which was being established with few interdisciplinary barriers in the sciences and engineering.

This choice turned into a happy and life-long career at UC San Diego. David R. Miller received his B.S. (Chem Eng) from UC Berkeley and his Ph.D (Chem Eng) from Princeton University, before joining the faculty at UCSD in 1966 as an Assistant Professor in the Applied Mechanics and Engineering Sciences AMES Department (now Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering MAE). He has served as Chairman of AMES, as Acting Dean of Engineering, and as Associate Dean of Engineering. In 1997 he was appointed as Associate Vice Chancellor - Academic Planning and Resources, and he served for two years as Acting Senior Vice-Chancellor of Academic Affairs. He has received the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, the Alumni Association Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award, Outstanding Teacher and Service Award from Revelle College, and the Chancellor's Associates UCSD Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi and Phi Beta Kappa.

In addition to his experimental research in engineering physics, Dr. Miller feels some of his greatest contribution while working at the Jacobs School and UC San Diego was teaching and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students. In fact, Dr. Miller didn't stop teaching when he retired either. Post-retirement, Dr. Miller continued to teach on recall. "Up until the last few years (referencing the 2020 pandemic), I was in the office five days a week," Dr. Miller enjoys teaching because it stimulates the mind and if he was teaching graduate students, he had the opportunity to learn himself while introducing interesting research to the students. "I always learned something while teaching a class," Dr. Miller said. The 2022/2023 school year is Dr. Miller's first year of not teaching at UCSD since he began his career here. However, Dr. Miller is still very involved. He currently sits on an Academic Senate committee and mentors undergraduate students through the UC San Diego Emeriti Association Chancellor's Scholarship. On average he mentors five students a quarter. "I enjoy them more than they enjoy me. They are so bright, and I enjoy hearing their stories," Dr. Miller said about the scholarship recipients that he has mentored.

Dr. Miller cited the founding faculty members of the AMES department as the most influential in his career. He specifically mentioned Sol Penner, Paul Libby, Forman Williams, and Dan Olfe. He noted how generous all of them were with their time and that you could just walk into their offices to ask questions and learn, whether it be about research, teaching, or administrative matters. He shared one story about how Sol Penner (who started the department and was the 1st Chair) helped him achieve tenure. When Dr. Miller was an assistant professor, he didn't expect to get tenure at UC San Diego. One day he got a call from Dr. Penner and was expecting to be told that he was not going to be approved for tenure. Instead, Dr. Penner told Dr. Miller that in fact senior faculty expected he should be approved for tenure, but there was an issue because he hadn't taught any undergraduate courses and the Regents had recently introduced a new requirement that faculty could not be advanced to tenure without undergraduate teaching experience. However, at the time, AMES had a policy that only tenured professors would teach undergraduate courses , so assistant professors were not assigned to teach undergraduate courses. In order to fast-track Dr. Miller's career, Dr. Penner immediately had Dr. Miller take over one of the undergraduate thermodynamics courses that he was teaching. Dr. Miller taught the class, received tenure, and continued to teach the thermodynamics course for many years.

Through his years of teaching, Dr. Miller has acquired a few tips for his students and faculty colleagues . First, he believes it is important for students to have an interest and do something creative outside of engineering. He also encourages students to engage in physical activity, art, or spending time with friends. He shared how important it is for engineers to get away from engineering for a bit and use different skills. He personally advises all students to take a poetry class but laughed because he doesn't believe any of his students have ever done it. He would advise faculty colleagues, "Whatever you're asked to do , be it in research, teaching, or committee service, do it well. If you don't like it, then don't do it the following year".