Eight new endowed chairs in the College of Engineering

The College of Engineering is proud to announce the selection of eight new endowed chairs to recognize outstanding scholarly achievement. The esteemed recipients are listed below.

Endowed chairs are one of the highest recognitions that can be awarded to a faculty member. They enable the college to recruit and retain the best and the brightest faculty to deliver on the breakthrough innovation and scholarly work we are known for in the world. We are extremely grateful to our donors for their generosity and support to build the college’s strength in engineering through our world-class faculty.

Amit Acharya

Paul P. Christiano Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Acharya is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and is a member of the Mechanics, Materials, and Computing research group. His research interests are in the areas of continuum mechanics, theoretical materials science, and applied mathematics. Acharya looks at how structural imperfections, or defects, in crystalline materials interact and evolve.

Michael Bockstaller

Alcoa Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

Bockstaller is a professor of materials science and engineering and the director of the AFRL Center of Excellence Center for Data-Driven Design of Multifunctional Material Systems. Bockstaller is a world leader in heterogeneous polymer-based materials, and his research aims to engineer materials with enhanced properties that contribute to the solution of contemporary material challenges.

Kaushik Dayal

Walter J. Blenko, Sr. Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Dayal is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Dayal’s research interests are in the area of theoretical and computational multiscale methods applied to problems in materials science, with particular focus on bridging from atomic to continuum scales in the context of functional behavior, non-equilibrium response, and electromagnetic effects.

Erica Fuchs

Kavčić-Moura Professor of Engineering and Public Policy

Fuchs is a professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy. Her research focuses on the development, commercialization and global manufacturing of emerging technologies, and national policy in that context. She founded and leads Carnegie Mellon’s Critical Technology Strategy Initiative. As part of that initiative, she received a one-year, $4M NSF grant to lead the National Network for Critical Technology Assessment, a consortium of 13 universities and 22 leading investigators in her area.

Paulina Jaramillo

Trustee Professor of Engineering and Public Policy

Jaramillo is a professor in engineering and public policy and a world-leading expert on life cycle assessment, energy systems, decarbonization, climate change impacts, and energy access and development in the Global South. She has led the Open Energy Outlook, an energy systems modeling activity that is one of a handful of “key initiatives” of CMU’s Scott Institute.

Sean Qian

H.J. Heinz III Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Qian is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. He directs the Mobility Data Analytics Center at CMU. In 2020, Qian founded a CMU technology spinoff firm, TraffiQure Technologies, to commercialize AI/ML technologies in the infrastructure and mobility service domain.

Costa Samaras

Trustee Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Samaras is the director of the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation and a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research focuses on the pathways to clean, climate-safe, equitable, and secure energy and infrastructure systems. He also directs the Center for Engineering and Resilience for Climate Adaptation and is the Director of the Power Sector Carbon Index.

Conrad Tucker

Trustee Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Conrad Tucker is the director of CMU-Africa and associate dean for international affairs-Africa, as well as a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research focuses on the design and optimization of systems through the acquisition, integration, and mining of large scale, disparate data.