Announcement of Engineering Dean

June 25, 2003

Dear Members of the Tufts Community,

I am pleased to announce that one of the world's top researchers in groundwater contamination and remediation and a member of the National Academy of Engineering--Linda Abriola--has been selected as the new Dean of Tufts' School of Engineering, effective Sept. 1. She is the Horace Williams King Collegiate Professor of Environmental Engineering and former director of the Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Program at the University of Michigan, where she has received numerous awards for excellence in both teaching and research.

Professor Abriola has helped to shape public policy on subsurface pollutant remediation and is one of the most visible leaders in the hydrology and environmental engineering fields. She was the first to develop a mathematical model for organic liquid contaminants in the hydrology literature at a time when little attention had been directed towards this problem. This seminal work has been widely referenced and is regarded as the foundation for subsequent work in this new area of groundwater research.

Her considerable expertise will add significant strength to the University-wide environmental research Tufts is pursuing across a variety of disciplines. She will re-establish her lab at Tufts within the coming year, and looks forward to working with students as she continues her research. Linda also will play a major role in Tufts Institute for the Environment and our nascent multidisciplinary doctoral program, "Water: Systems, Science, and Society" - which we believe is the first of its kind in the country.

Over the span of her 19-year career in academia, she has authored more than 90 peer-reviewed publications. She has played a substantial role in the growth of the university's graduate program in environmental engineering, currently ranked among the top two programs in the nation.

As you know, our School of Engineering is home to The Gordon Institute, which was named for the University's largest benefactor, Dr. Bernard Gordon, the founder and chairman of Analogic Corporation. Undergraduates are eligible for a new combined bachelor's/master's degree from the School of Engineering and the Gordon Institute.

Linda earned a bachelor's degree with highest honors in civil engineering from Drexel University. She then earned two master's degrees and a Ph.D. in civil engineering from Princeton. In addition to her position at the University of Michigan, she has worked as a project engineer for Procter & Gamble and has held visiting positions in the Department of Geotechnical Engineering at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalu?a in Barcelona, Spain and the Department of Petroleum Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.

She is the recipient of many honors, grants and awards, including the Outstanding Educator Award from the Association for Women Geoscientists and the Distinguished Darcy Lecturer from the National Groundwater Association. She is an Information Science Institute (ISI) Highly Cited Author in ecology/environment and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Abriola's current and recent service activities include membership on the National Research Council Committee on Source Removal of Contaminants in the Subsurface, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Source Zone Remediation Expert Panel, and the U.S. Department of Energy Natural and Accelerated Bioremediation Research Advisory Committee.

On a final personal note about Professor Abriola, I'm pleased to say that she's also a violinist. In fact, she is an outstanding classical musician and jokes that she "earned an engineering degree to fall back on." She told me that among the many reasons she's chosen to come to Tufts is the importance we place on a strong liberal arts education, as she feels that this is instrumental in creating a "new breed of engineers." Her point is that today's engineers must be outstanding communicators, project leaders and able to manage diverse perspectives and abilities in solving complex problems that the world faces today. Our shared vision is that those engineers will come from Tufts!

I would like to extend special thanks to Diane Souvaine, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science, who led the search committee for our new engineering school dean. Diane was extraordinarily generous with her time in ferreting out the best possible engineering dean candidates in the country, and working with them through the selection process. The entire search committee worked tirelessly and I thank all its members for their dedicated service. We can all take great pride in the fact that Professor Abriola chose Tufts over some of this country's most prestigious research institutions.

Interim Dean Vincent Manno deserves our deepest appreciation, because he and the school's leadership team have seamlessly managed the academic priorities and daily operations since January. Vin has overseen an ambitious and exemplary planning process in just six months and has shown himself to be an outstanding administrator. Vin has graciously agreed to continue as interim dean and begin a smooth transition to Professor Abriola's arrival.

I know you all will join President Bacow, Trustees Bernard Gordon and Monte Haymon, and me in welcoming Professor Abriola to Tufts. Her current email address is abriola@engin.umich.edu if you wish to send her a note before she arrives on campus.

Best regards,

Jamshed Bharucha
Provost and Senior Vice President