Inside Iowa State

Feb. 27, 2009

Four finalists chosen for engineering post

by Annette Hacker, News Service

Four candidates will interview at Iowa State next month in the hopes of becoming the next College of Engineering dean. The finalists are:

• Theodore Bergman, program director, Thermal Transport Processes Program, National Science Foundation (NSF); and professor of mechanical engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs
• Ishwar Puri, professor and department head, engineering science and mechanics, Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg
• David Rosowsky, A.P. and Florence Wiley Chair Professor and department head, Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station
• Jonathan Wickert, Larry and Pam Pithan Professor of Mechanical Engineering and chair of mechanical engineering, Iowa State

Finalists will visit campus during the next two weeks. Each candidate will speak and answer questions at an open forum from 3:45 to 5 p.m. in the Howe Hall auditorium. A reception will follow in the lower-level atrium. Forum dates are:

• March 3: Bergman
• March 5: Wickert
• March 9: Rosowsky
• March 12: Puri

In addition, candidates will meet informally with faculty, staff and students on the second day of their campus visits. The locations and times for the informal sessions, along with the candidates' interview schedules and full vitae, are online at www.provost.iastate.edu/searches/engineering.

Theodore (Ted) Bergman

Bergman has been a professor of mechanical engineering at Connecticut since 1996. He has been on leave from the university since 2008, serving as program director of the NSF's Thermal Transport Processes Program. Bergman also has held several administrative roles at UConn as associate dean for research and outreach in the School of Engineering (2004-06), interim department head of materials science and engineering (2005-06), and department head of mechanical engineering (1998-2004). Bergman has held named professorships at both Connecticut and the University of Texas, Austin, where he was promoted to full professor in 1996. Bergman worked in industry as a design engineer with Black and Veatch Engineers, Kansas City, from 1978 to 1980. He received numerous honors, including a Presidential Young Investigator award from the NSF and a Melville Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Bergman was named an ASME fellow in 1995 and served as associate technical editor of the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer.

Bergman earned a bachelor's of science degree (1978) in mechanical engineering from the University of Kansas, Lawrence; and master's and doctoral (1985) degrees in mechanical engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind.

Ishwar Puri

Puri has served in his current role as professor and department head of engineering science and mechanics at Virginia Tech since 2004. He also is a professor in the Virginia Tech--Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences. Previously, Puri was an assistant professor, associate professor and professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois, Chicago, from 1990 to 2004. While there, Puri served in various administrative capacities, including director of graduate studies in mechanical and industrial engineering; associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Engineering; director of the Center for International Engineering Education and Research; and executive associate dean of engineering. Puri is a fellow of ASME and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is an editor of the journal Experimental Heat Transfer and an associate editor of the International Journal of Reacting Systems.

Puri received a bachelor's of science degree in mechanical engineering (1982) from the University of Delhi, India; and master's (1984) and doctoral (1987) degrees in engineering science (applied mechanics) from the University of California, San Diego.

David Rosowsky

Rosowsky is in his fifth year as head of the department of civil engineering at Texas A&M. Previously, he served as professor and Richardson Chair, departments of civil engineering and wood science and engineering at Oregon State University, Corvallis; associate and assistant professor of civil engineering at Clemson University, Clemson, S.C.; visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.; and assistant professor of civil engineering at Purdue. He is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M. Rosowsky also is a licensed professional engineer. He serves on the editorial board of Structural Safety and has been an associate editor of ASCE's Journal of Structural Engineering, Natural Hazards Review, and ASCE's Journal of Infrastructure Systems.

Rosowsky earned bachelor's (1985) and master's (1987) degrees in civil engineering from Tufts University, Medford, Mass.; and a doctorate in civil engineering from Johns Hopkins in 1990.

Jonathan Wickert

Wickert joined Iowa State as mechanical engineering chair and the Larry and Pam Pithan Professor of Mechanical Engineering in 2007. From 1990 to 2007, he was a member of the mechanical engineering faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where he was promoted to full professor in 1999. Wickert served as a visiting research fellow at the University of Cambridge, England; and as a visiting professor at Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. He has served as an associate editor of the Journal of Vibration and Acoustics and the Journal of Information Storage Systems. He is a fellow and a member of the department chair executive committee of ASME, and was a founding member of (and served in various leadership positions on) the executive committee for ASME's information storage and processing systems division.

Wickert received bachelor's (1985), master's (1987) and doctoral (1989) degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Engineering dean open forums

Howe Hall auditorium

3:30-5 p.m.

March 3: Theodore Bergman

March 5: Jonathan Wickert

March 9: David Rosowsky

March 12: Ishwar Puri