Sukhatme Named Dean of UB College of Arts and Sciences

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Uday P. Sukhatme, interim vice provost for academic programs at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has been named dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo, effective Aug. 1.

Sukhatme will succeed Interim Dean Charles L. Stinger, who will return to his previous position as professor in the Department of History.

"Uday Sukhatme has a superb record of building excellence, and a demonstrated ability to understand and facilitate a broad range of academic programs," Provost Elizabeth D. Capaldi said in announcing Sukhatme's appointment. "He is ideally suited to lead the College of Arts and Sciences during the next critical period of its development."

As dean of Arts and Sciences, Sukhatme will oversee 31 departments and a variety of interdisciplinary centers and research institutes, as well as the academic careers of 11,000 undergraduates and 1,700 graduate students. Faculty affiliated with the college provide 83 percent of all the instruction at the university in the freshman and sophomore years, to both arts and sciences students and to students in all fields taking such general-education courses as mathematics and English.

Sukhatme comes to UB after spending more than 20 years at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A professor of physics at the university, he served as chair of the Department of Physics from 1991-98, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs from 1998-2000 and interim vice provost for academic affairs from 2000 to the present.

In his current position, he is responsible for all undergraduate academic programs, as well as supervising the campus promotion-and-tenure process. He initiated the popular "Cutting Edge" lecture series that has brought hundreds of top high school students and their parents to the UIC campus to hear Saturday-morning lectures given by leading professors about their disciplinary research.

His own research in theoretical high-energy physics and quantum mechanics has been funded continuously by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy for the past 21 years. Among his 164 publications are 13 that have been included in the top-cited category in citation databases, an indication of their impact in the discipline of physics.

Sukhatme has taught at both the graduate and undergraduate level, and received the UIC Excellence in Teaching Award in 1996.

He is the principal investigator on a five year, $2.5 million project funded by the National Science Foundation that is aimed at improving minority enrollment in science, mathematics, engineering and technology disciplines. The Alliance for Minority Participation project involves an alliance of eight Illinois universities.

Sukhatme received a bachelor's degree in mathematics, with honors, from the University of Delhi, India, and bachelor's and doctoral degrees in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.