As our faculty, staff and students have received and continue to receive vaccinations, the university is preparing for in-person fall instruction. Back in June, Cal/OSHA revised workplace regulations to align with CDC guidelines and lifted the mandatory use of masks and physical distancing requirements on campus. I am looking forward to fall quarter and seeing our students return to campus.
We have just welcomed our new Stacey Nicholas Dean of the Samueli School of Engineering, Professor Magnus Egerstedt. He is an expert in robotics and control systems and was previously chair at Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. We appreciate and thank Interim Dean Michael Green for his dedicated leadership and service during the past year.
In this newsletter, we also welcome new faculty member SungWoo Nam as associate professor. He was previously at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Nam’s research focuses on mechanically coupled properties in low-dimensional materials and building devices based on advanced materials.
We are pleased to highlight Assistant Professor Penghui Cao for receiving an Early Career Research award from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science to support his research into the effects of radiation in materials, and the election of Professor Tryphon Georgiou as SIAM Fellow, among other noteworthy news.
Best regards,
Roger H. Rangel
Professor and Chair
