Wendi Heinzelman, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Rochester, has been named Dean of Graduate Studies in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering, a new position created "to highlight the centrality of graduate education."
This appointment will also enable Paul F. 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 her hope is that as dean of graduate studies she can help 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 bachelors degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1995, and her masters 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 of Rochester as 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 University of Rochester 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.