Dear Colleagues,
Spring is upon us. The weather is improving, finals are here, and our students are joyfully and proudly taking photos around campus in their graduation regalia. We recently celebrated our year’s most outstanding students at our annual awards ceremony. Congratulations to our many successful students and to all of our soon-to-be graduates!
Just as our students are moving on with excitement to the next part of their lives, we, too, are taking steps in new directions. I am thrilled to be serving as interim dean as a search is getting underway for a new dean. While I’ve worked in the college as a professor and as a school director for almost 20 years, serving as interim dean has given me a new perspective and appreciation of the work of all of the faculty, staff, and students in this college.
While campus will soon be quieting down, our researchers will remain busy during the summer months. We’re pleased, particularly, about the growth in our interdisciplinary research efforts in areas ranging from artificial intelligence and chip design to environmental research, health, robotics, and ceramics. Researchers in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering are working with those in veterinary medicine to study virus-cell interactions. Another group of researchers are bringing together robotics, computer science, and agriculture to improve the efficiency of robots for apple harvesting. These interdisciplinary efforts bring in grant support, but, more importantly, they bring varied and new perspectives to problem solving and create the opportunity to come up with better solutions to our most important national challenges.
It’s also wonderful to see numerous recent faculty successes, including Dominic Scalise, who recently received a NSF CAREER award, Amit Bandyopadhyay, who was named a fellow of the MRS, Xianming Shi and Jinwen Zhang, who were named to the National Academy of Inventors, and Soumik Banerjee, who was named an ASME fellow.
Meanwhile, as soon as graduation is over, construction on our new Schweitzer Engineering Building gets underway in earnest. We’re so thankful for the many alumni and donors who have supported our efforts in the last few years to provide this welcoming and centralized home for our students to gather and learn. We’re especially pleased to announce the naming of the welcome center in the new building. The naming celebrates the late Diane Coughlin who, in all she did, truly made many feel welcome. We can’t wait to see the doors open in 2026!
Thanks for your continued support of the Voiland College.
Partha Pratim Pande, FIEEE
Interim Dean and Professor
Boeing Centennial Chair in Computer Engineering
Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture
Washington State University
pande@wsu.edu
509-335-5593