Dr. Ramaswamy Chandrasekaran, Ashbel Smith Professor of computer science and a longtime faculty member at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), has been appointed interim dean of UTD’s Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science while the university conducts a nationwide search for a replacement for outgoing Dean William P. Osborne.
Earlier this year, Dr. Osborne announced he was leaving UTD to become dean of a new School of Interdisciplinary Computing and Engineering at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. He is expected to assume his new position in the next 30 days.
Chandrasekaran, known to his colleagues and students as “Chandra,” has agreed to serve as interim dean of the Jonsson School until a permanent replacement for Osborne is hired. UTD President Dr. Franklyn Jenifer said that he and Chandrasekaran had a mutual understanding that in assuming the interim deanship the professor would not be a candidate for the permanent position.
A committee, composed of UTD senior administrators and faculty members, has been formed and, with the assistance of a leading outside executive search firm, has begun an extensive search for a permanent dean of the Jonsson School. Jenifer said that he hoped the process would be concluded by no later than the end of the coming academic year.
“We are both fortunate and delighted that Professor Chandra has agreed to lead the Jonsson School through this transitional period,” said Jenifer. “He is well-known and well-respected by his colleagues and students. His will be a steady hand on the helm of the Jonsson School while we seek to identify the best conceivable candidates for what we believe is one of the top positions of its kind in the nation.”
The Jonsson School is the fastest-growing engineering school in the United States, and it ranks second nationally in the number of computer science degrees awarded annually. In addition, the school ranks 14th in the country in the number of master’s degrees awarded in electrical, electronics and communications engineering and 25th in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in those disciplines.
This summer, UTD is scheduled to complete a 152,000-square-foot addition to the Jonsson School, effectively doubling its capacity to approximately 6,000 students.
The school is a leader in innovative degree offerings. Several years ago, UTD became the first university in the U.S. to offer a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications engineering, and last year it joined the ranks of a select group of universities that grant a B.S. degree in software engineering.
Chandra, who holds a Ph.D. degree in operations research from the University of California, Berkeley, joined the UTD faculty in 1975 as associate professor of operations research in the School of Management. He later became professor, then the Ashbel Smith Professor of operations research. He moved to the Jonsson School as the Ashbel Smith Professor of computer science in 1999.
Among his areas of research are computational geometry, scheduling, telecommunications networks and mathematical programming.