March 3, 2008
Wendi Heinzelman named dean of graduate studies
Wendi Heinzelman
jonathan.sherwood@rochester.edu
Wendi Heinzelman, associate professor in the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been named dean of
graduate studies, a new position created to highlight the centrality of
graduate education.
This appointment will also enable Paul Slattery,
who has served as dean of research and graduate studies since 1998, and
whose new title will be dean of research, to devote more effort to the
rapidly expanding areas of technology transfer and information
technology.
“Paul has done a marvelous job as dean of
graduate studies, but his other responsibilities are increasingly
demanding,” says Peter Lennie, the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean
of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering. “Having a person
whose primary focus is strengthening graduate education will be of great
benefit to Arts, Sciences, and Engineering. I couldn’t be happier
that Wendi will take over graduate studies. She will bring great energy to
graduate affairs.”
“I feel strongly that graduate students are an
integral and vital component of any top research university,” says
Heinzelman. “Strong graduate students help develop new research
directions, provide insight into existing problems, maintain high levels of
research productivity, and raise the profile of individual
departments.”
Heinzelman, who will begin as dean on July 1, says she
hopes to strengthen the College’s existing graduate programs as
well as support newly established graduate programs. She says she plans to
provide a unified umbrella for graduate studies so that graduate
students feel “more connected to the College as a whole.”
In addition to her position in the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Heinzelman holds an appointment in the
Department of Computer Science. She earned her bachelor’s degree in
electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1995, and her
master’s and doctoral degrees from MIT in 1997 and 2000,
respectively. Her research is currently focused on wireless
communication, networking, mobile computing, and multimedia communication.
In 2003 she received the University’s G. Graydon and Jane W. Curtis
Award for Teaching Excellence.
Slattery joined the University as a research associate
and U.S. Atomic Energy Commission postdoctoral fellow in 1967. He chaired
the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 1986 to 1998, and shared the
first Goergen Award for distinguished contributions to undergraduate
learning in 1997. Slattery’s principal research activity since 1997
has been the D-Zero experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, where his
research is focused on elucidating the properties of the top quark, the
most massive of the known states of matter.
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