Vijayakumar Bhagavatula named interim dean of the College of Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University has named Vijayakumar Bhagavatula interim dean of the College of Engineering.
Carnegie Mellon University has named Vijayakumar (Kumar) Bhagavatula, professor of electrical and computer engineering, interim dean of the College of Engineering. He will assume the duties of interim dean on June 6, 2025.
“Kumar will ensure leadership continuity as we launch and conduct a search for the next dean,” said Jim Garrett, provost and chief academic officer, in an email announce to the CMU community in January.
Kumar will ensure leadership continuity as we launch and conduct a search for the next dean.
Jim Garrett, Provost and Chief Academic Officer, Carnegie Mellon University
Bhagavatula has an extensive leadership background, having served as director of CMU-Africa from January 2018 - December 2021, interim vice provost for research at Carnegie Mellon University from April 2017 - December 2017, and associate dean for the College of Engineering from September 2010 - March 2017.
Under his leadership of CMU-Africa, Bhagavatula left a legacy of high growth and strategic program development to expand CMU-Africa’s impact on the continent through education and research.
Bhagavatula, shown here and above teaching a recent class, started his career in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1982.
His research interests include computer vision and machine learning. His publications include the book Correlation Pattern Recognition, 22 book chapters, more than 410 conference papers, and 210 journal papers. He is also the co-inventor of 12 patents. In recognition of his research contributions, he has been elected to the rank of Fellow in six professional societies (IEEE, Optica, SPIE, IAPR, AAAS and NAI).
Bhagavatula started his career in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in 1982. He received B.Tech. and M. Tech. degrees in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1975 and 1977, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1980.