Engineering Momentum

The UConn School of Engineering is growing, expanding, moving in new directions and building new energy for the future. With this idea in mind, we are reframing and renaming our electronic and print news to Momentum, to better reflect who we are at this time.

Momentum: the impetus of a physical object in motion, or
the impetus of a nonphysical process,
such as an idea or a course of events.

Dear Friends,

…Momentum is also the word that best characterizes the UConn School of Engineering at this important juncture in our evolution. We are growing, expanding, moving in new directions and building new energy for the future.  With this idea in mind, we are reframing and renaming our electronic and print news to Momentum, to better reflect who we are at this time.

As many of you know, in December, Dean Mun Choi was tapped to serve the larger university as Provost and Executive Vice President. With his exceptional skills, vision and collaborative style, Mun will be an important asset for UConn in the years ahead, particularly as the university works to establish closer partnerships with industry.

In response to President Susan Herbst’s ambitious plan to hire 290 new tenured/tenure track faculty across the university through 2016, the School of Engineering launched 23 new faculty searches in areas such as advanced manufacturing, materials genomics, genomics and biomedical science, human sustainability, and physical and cyber infrastructure resilience.

On January 31st, Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy announced a new initiative to invest more than $1.5 billion in bond monies and $137 million in general fund spending in the University of Connecticut over the next decade to support a 30 percent increase in enrollment at Uconn’s Storrs, Hartford and Stamford campuses, and a 70 percent increase in enrollment in the School of Engineering.case4-kazem

Planning for the UConn Tech Park continues, and the inaugural Innovation Partnership Building – to be unveiled in 2015 – will house collaborative research and development in advanced manufacturing, biomedical devices, high performance computing and more.

In the fall, the Board of Trustees approved the formation of three new departments within the School of Engineering. The Biomedical Engineering Department is being jointly established, administered and maintained at the Storrs campus by the School of Engineering along with the Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine at the UConn Health Center campus in Farmington. The Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department and the Materials Science & Engineering Department have emerged from a formerly united department; these units will be better suited to recruit top-notch students and faculty, better equipped to refine academic programs and develop winning proposals, and more agile to meet emerging opportunities.

In October, General Electric announced a five-year, $7.5 million investment in UConn that supports joint R&D on core electrical-protection technologies, including circuit breakers; graduate fellowships; GE-sponsored research and an endowed GE professorship in the School of Engineering.

These are just a few of the recent, high-impact developments that are helping to redefine UConn and the School of Engineering. Look for details of other exciting news in upcoming issues of Momentum.

Cordially,

Kazem Kazerounian
Interim Dean