SUBJECT:

Jacobs School of Engineering Acting Dean

It is my pleasure to announce that Professor Jeanne Ferrante will serve as Acting Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering effective September 24 through December 31, 2007. As many of you are aware, Dean Seible, as recipient of the prestigious Humboldt Award, was invited to carry out research with a host university in Germany. This award provides him the opportunity to spend his sabbatical investigating fundamental design concepts that could improve how structures perform under extreme loads caused by natural and manmade disasters.

We are fortunate that Professor Ferrante, a capable and distinguished leader, has accepted this important role. Jeanne Ferrante received her Ph.D.in mathematics from MIT in 1974 and taught for four years at Tufts University before joining the computer science department of IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in 1978. She joined UCSD's Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) faculty in 1994, served as CSE Department Chair from 1996-1999 and as Associate Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering since 2002.

Ferrante's research interests include optimizing for parallelism and memory, and scheduling large-scale distributed platforms. A distinguished computer scientist, Ferrante recently received the prestigious 2006 SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award given by the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM). She is one of three professors in the High Performance Compilers group, a Fellow of the ACM, and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

In her role as Associate Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering, Ferrante founded the UCSD Women's Leadership Alliance, which promotes leadership development and recognition of women campus leaders. She has worked successfully to increase diversity of the engineering faculty and, for her efforts, she was recognized as UCSD Community Champion for Diversity in 2004. Ferrante recently received the 2007 Educator Pinnacle Award from Athena, the leadership organization for women executives in San Diego's technology, life sciences, and healthcare sectors, honoring Jeanne for her many successful efforts to encourage women to pursue careers in engineering and her leadership in support of women at UCSD.

Dr. Ferrante's administrative and scholarly accomplishments make her exceptionally well qualified to provide leadership as Acting Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering for this three-month period. Please join me in thanking Associate Dean Ferrante for assuming this important role and in wishing Dean Seible a rewarding and productive sabbatical.

Marjorie C. Caserio Interim Senior Vice Chancellor