Happy New Year! My first two months with UW Engineering were a whirlwind of activity; it was a pleasure getting to know the Visiting Committee and other friends of the College and I look forward to meeting many more of you in 2020.

My focus for the year ahead is strategic planning to chart the College’s course for the next five years. This requires a thoughtful, inclusive process that seeks input and buy-in across constituencies. I will also work with our department chairs to ensure that the Washington state proviso funding we received to expand enrollment is implemented, and to hire stellar faculty members to fill research gaps, enabling us to compete for more federal funding.

Finally, I look forward to continuing Dean Bragg’s legacy of supporting the student experience, particularly with fundraising for the new Interdisciplinary Education Building. We received several significant gifts in 2019 that launched our fundraising effort; I’m so grateful to those of you who have contributed to this critical addition to our infrastructure. While the UW’s “Be Boundless” campaign will end this summer, we will of course continue to seek support for the building as well as other College and departmental priorities.

Thank you for all you do!

Nancy Allbritton
Dean of Engineering

Paul Liao (Ph.D. CEE, 1972) came from humble beginnings in Taiwan, giving him an appreciation for the educational opportunities and mentorship that resulted from his hard work. Already a civil engineer in Taiwan, while studying for his doctorate at the UW Paul began working at a local consulting company and gained national attention and international recognition for his research on methods of water treatment for fisheries. This work led to a career at KCM, a Seattle-based engineering company that merged with Tetra-Tech in 1995; Paul became Chairman, CEO and CFO of the company, which became one of the largest engineering firms in the country, responsible for a number of important projects in the Puget Sound area.

Throughout his life, Paul and his wife Mei-Yea, also from Taiwan, valued and promoted education, both to their own children and grandchildren and through their philanthropy. This philanthropy included a Regental Fellowship in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the UW, which supports exchange with the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan.

After Paul’s passing in 2018, Mei-Yea and the couple’s daughters, Darlene and Dahlia, chose to honor Paul’s memory with a significant gift to the fund for the College’s Interdisciplinary Engineering Building. This generosity is a reflection of Mei-Yea’s and Paul’s desire to support education and training opportunities for students who will one day be able to “pay it forward” by contributing to society in the future, and a tribute to Paul’s legacy of cultivating collaboration. 

Boeing Endowed Professor for Excellence
William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics

“The Boeing Endowed Professorship allows me to venture into important areas not well supported by government agencies and other common sources of research and education support. It provides seed funds for proof-of-concept work that leads to more substantial support later and for complementing support from other sources to complete development of experimental capabilities that will serve the department, Boeing, and the field of aeronautics for years.

“This past year, Boeing Endowed Professorship funds have supported the development of an airplane design course and a new course on configuration aerodynamics. Both provide an educational experience for students that links the fundamentals with the objectives, constraints, and practices that lead to the development of real aircraft.

“We are developing a center of excellence for active control of advanced aircraft. A key element of this development is the establishment of testing capabilities. Boeing Endowed Professorship funds were used to support the development of gust generation systems for our 3x3 and Kirsten Wind tunnels. With the completion of these systems – especially the gust generation system for the Kirsten Wind Tunnel — we will be uniquely positioned among U.S. universities to carry out low-speed gust response tests of actively controlled aeroservoelastic systems. [Aeroservoelasticity is the physics and engineering of structural dynamic, unsteady aerodynamic, active control, and flight mechanic interactions on flexible aircraft.]”