Inside Rensselaer, June 12, 2009: Several Key Leadership Positions Filled

The Institute recently announced that it has filled several key leadership positions. The new members of the Rensselaer community will be coming on board over the next few months. Look for further coverage in Inside Rensselaer later this summer.


Paul Marthers

Paul Marthers will join the Institute as vice president for enrollment and dean of undergraduate and graduate admissions on Aug. 1. Marthers, who has more than 25 years of experience in higher and secondary education and administration, is currently the dean of admission at Reed College in Portland, Ore. As the vice president for enrollment, Marthers will work closely and inclusively with the president, the executive cabinet, the enrollment staff, and the Rensselaer community. He will provide leadership and direction to the entire enrollment management and financial aid programs, assuming direct responsibility for all programs, functions, facets, and activities leading to undergraduate enrollment at the Institute. Marthers also will be responsible for the oversight of Undergraduate Admissions, Graduate Admissions, and Financial Aid, as well as working collaboratively with the deans of Undergraduate and Graduate Education.

Marthers is widely recognized for his work with the admissions process as well as his scholarly publications. In 2007, The Chronicle of Higher Education selected him as one of “10 admission deans who are shaping their field.”


Evan Douglis

Evan Douglis, chair of the Undergraduate Department in the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute and principal of the contemporary architecture and design firm Evan Douglis Studio, will join Rensselaer as dean of the School of Architecture on Aug. 1. As the dean of architecture, Douglis will be responsible for leading the undergraduate and graduate educational programs and research of the School of Architecture. Douglis will continue the development of interdisciplinary initiatives, as well as the appointment, promotion, and development of faculty and staff.

Evan Douglis Studio is an internationally renowned architecture and interdisciplinary design firm committed to a culture of beautiful and benevolent design. The research of the firm into computer-aided digital design and fabrication technology, new materials and multimedia installations as applied to a range of diverse gallery installations, commercial projects, urban redevelopment schemes, and more recently a new generation of building components has elicited international acclaim. Douglis’ work offers unique insight into the role of smart materials in sustainable design, mass-customization for prefab construction, and the next generation of architectural skins integrating structure and ornament.


David Rosowsky

David Rosowsky will join the university as dean of the School of Engineering on July 15. Rosowsky joins Rensselaer from his current position of professor and head of the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University, where he is also the A.P. and Florence Wiley Chair in Civil Engineering.

As dean of the School of Engineering at Rensselaer, Rosowsky will be responsible for strengthening the prominence of the school as one of the top engineering institutions in the nation. Rosowsky will continue to improve the School of Engineering undergraduate and graduate academic curricula and programs, and bolster its established excellence in sponsored research. He also will continue to grow Rensselaer’s world-class engineering faculty and staff.

Rosowsky is a renowned expert in the areas of structural reliability, probabilistic modeling of structural and environmental loads, and probability-based design. In recent years, his research has focused on the behavior of built environments subject to natural hazards; modeling and analysis of load effects on buildings and other structures, with particular emphasis on complex environmental phenomena; performance-based engineering for design, post-disaster condition assessment, and loss estimation studies; and reliability-based assessment of reinforced concrete bridges.


Francine Berman

Francine Berman, High Performance Computing Endowed Chair at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, will join Rensselaer as the vice president for research on Aug. 1. Berman is widely recognized as a pioneer in the effort to build a stronger digital infrastructure in the United States, known as a cyberinfrastructure, and has been named as a technology leader by Newsweek, BusinessWeek, and IEEE Spectrum.

As the vice president for research, Berman will be responsible for advancing the research enterprise across the full range of academic disciplines and interdisciplinary activities. She will work closely with the president and provost in the development and implementation of policies and practices relating to all aspects of the university’s research mission.

Berman is one of the two founding principal investigators of the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid project, the largest open scientific research infrastructure connecting supercomputer centers across the nation. She also served as director of the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, a consortium of 41 research groups and institutions with the goal of building a national infrastructure to support research and education in science and engineering.

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