Duke Engineer Tod Laursen Named President of Khalifa University
Laursen served as senior associate dean for education for the Pratt School of Engineering from 2003 to 2008, and is currently chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science.
The Board of Trustees at Khalifa University of Science, Research and Technology (KUSTAR) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, announced Monday that it has appointed Duke University mechanical engineering professor Tod Laursen as its new president.
Laursen was selected from more than 200 candidates following an extensive international search process that started in 2009. He will assume his position in August 2010.
"KUSTAR is a young university with big ambitions. The board of trustees was determined to find a president who matched these qualities," wrote KUSTAR Interim President Arif Sultan Al Hammadi in a news announcement. "In professor Laursen we have a leading engineer who is both academically renowned and passionate about science and technology. His interdisciplinary experience will prove invaluable in bringing together the various aspects of the student and faculty body, and uniting the different disciplines. We are confident that he will be an inspirational guiding force for our students and a motivated leader for our growing faculty and staff."
Laursen calls the opportunity to lead KUSTAR "a profound honor and the opportunity of a lifetime."
"Khalifa University is entering a new chapter in its history. We will be building a new campus and aggressively expanding the scope of our programmatic offerings," Laursen said. "I see my responsibility as helping to shape the future of generations of technically skilled graduates in the United Arab Emirates who can then contribute to the social and economic development of their nation."
Duke engineering dean Tom Katsouleas said Laursen was a transformative presence for Duke's Pratt School of Engineering.
"If one looks at the improvements in a wide variety of metrics for the school, including student satisfaction, freshman and senior design experiences and physical infrastructure, one can detect the point that Tod became involved in those activities," Katsouleas said. "He created the Energy and Environment Certificate that has been such a distinctive addition to Duke undergraduate educational offerings. He has provided leadership for the school in so many ways, including most recently taking the lead in planning the Engineering Design Center building, and chairing the Energy Engineering Committee.
"In two years as chair of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, he has invigorated the department with several key faculty hires and new master's of engineering degrees," Katsouleas said. "On a personal level, Tod has been a friend and valued adviser to me and to so many of us in the school. There has always been a wake of good cheer following his footsteps, and he will be deeply missed."
Laursen served as senior associate dean for education for the Pratt School of Engineering from 2003 to 2008, and is currently chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (MEMS). His teaching career at Duke has spanned 18 years; serving first for 16 years as a faculty member in Civil and Environmental Engineering before becoming the Chair of MEMS in 2008. Together with professor John Dolbow, he is the co-director of the Duke Computational Mechanics Laboratory and is a recognized expert in the development of computational algorithms for treatment of interfaces in mechanical systems.
Laursen was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2008, and will be awarded Fellow distinction in the International Association on Computational Mechanics in the summer of 2010. He is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the United States Association for Computational Mechanics, Tau Beta Pi-the National Engineering Honor Society, and Pi Tau Sigma -- the National Honorary Mechanical Engineering Fraternity.
Before joining the Duke faculty in 1992, he worked as a solid mechanics analyst at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1986 to 1992 and worked for Boeing conducting structural analysis research in 1985.
A Khalifa University news release about the appointment can be found at http://www.kustar.ac.ae/main/index.php?page=new-president.