Dean's message
18 New Endowed Chairs!
August 2024
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I am absolutely thrilled to announce that we have created 18 new endowed chairs here at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Endowed chairs are a powerful and enabling resource, which is why I’m so proud of this news and why I’m so thankful to Irwin and Joan Jacobs. Their generosity and vision made these new endowed chairs possible, bringing our total number of endowed chairs to approximately 70.
Endowed chairs provide precious resources that accelerate faculty careers and provide research support for students. In acknowledgement of their great importance, we have already filled 14 of the 18 endowed chairs. We will announce the 4 remaining chair holders very soon.
There are two interrelated aspects of this new set of endowed chairs that I’d like to share right off the bat.
First, each of the endowed chairs is named for an early faculty member of the Jacobs School of Engineering. My conversations with Irwin led to this strategy for honoring faculty who provided strong foundations for our current Jacobs School of Engineering.
Second, each of the inaugural holders of these endowed chairs have been selected by their peers – and nearly all of the holders of these new endowed chairs are mid-career Jacobs School faculty. Each is hard at work deepening the foundations that will set the tone for tomorrow’s Jacobs School – and in this way, we are honoring our foundation builders of the past and the present.
With more than 175 faculty hired into the Jacobs School since I began as Dean, we have generated a community of early and mid- career faculty whose careers need to be accelerated to the greatest extent possible. I firmly believe that it is my responsibility to ensure that our faculty are empowered to have better careers here than anywhere else – and by doing so they will help all of us lift the Jacobs School even higher.
You can be assured I will continue to work ever harder to find the resources and support needed to create additional endowed chairs not just to recognize and celebrate our incredibly deserving Jacobs School faculty – but also to continue to empower and enable them to do the research that makes bold possible.
If you are inspired to be a part of this journey to accelerate engineering and computer science to improve lives and solve the toughest challenges facing society, I hope you will get in touch.
Read our full August 2024 news email here.
Learn more about the faculty who are the inaugural holders of the 18 new endowed chairs here.
As always, I can be reached at DeanPisano@ucsd.edu
Sincerely,
Al
Albert ("Al") P. Pisano
Dean, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
Special Adviser to the Chancellor for Campus Strategic Initiatives
(View the full list of Dean's Columns by Albert P. Pisano here.)