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[em]Washington Engineer[/em] - January 2014 Dean's Message

As we usher in 2014, I'm proud to reflect back on significant research, discoveries and partnerships forged as we closed out the last calendar year. They remind me of the dedication, tenacity and creativity of our faculty, staff and students in the College of Engineering.

Leaders across campus were excited and honored to welcome Gov. Jay Inslee to the university last month as we launched the new Clean Energy Institute. This center will advance our research in solar energy and electrical energy storage, plus bring new faculty members to the UW. Chemical engineering professor Daniel Schwartz is the center's director, and he leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers working to make solar power a more efficient and affordable renewable resource. It's an exciting time to work as a researcher in this field at the UW.

Big data touches nearly every department and researcher on campus, and now the UW will be able to guide collaboration among labs and research teams through a recent award that emphasizes data-intensive discovery. The UW, the University of California, Berkeley, and New York University are partners in a five-year, $37.8 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation that will expand our team of data scientists on campus and fund postdoctoral fellows pursuing interdisciplinary data-science research, among other new additions. The College of Engineering and Computer Science & Engineering will benefit greatly from this initiative that builds upon the university's eScience Institute.

As you’ll read in this issue, I’m pleased to announce the appointment of two important leadership roles within the College. Rajesh Rao, an associate professor of computer science and engineering, is the director of the National Science Foundation's Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CNSE) based at UW. And, François Baneyx is the new chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering as former chair Daniel Schwartz moves into his lead position with the UW's Clean Energy Institute. I look forward to working with both of them.

Thank you for taking time to learn more about UW Engineering and for reading Washington Engineer. I wish you all the best in your pursuits this new year.

Michael B. Bragg
Frank & Julie Jungers Dean of Engineering