Jayathi Murthy, who is chair of the Cockrell School's Department of Mechanical Engineering and holds the Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Memorial Chair in Engineering, has been named dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her appointment becomes effective Jan. 1, 2016.
Murthy joined the Cockrell School in 2012, becoming the first woman to head Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Under her leadership, the department has enjoyed top 10 rankings in each of the past three years. She has launched significant initiatives to expand hands-on and project-based learning opportunities and to increase female enrollment.
“Jayathi has been a visionary leader of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and I am extremely grateful for her numerous contributions to Texas Engineering,” said Cockrell School Dean Sharon L. Wood. “She will be an outstanding leader for UCLA, and we wish her much success.”
Prior to joining UT Austin, Murthy held engineering faculty positions at Purdue University and Carnegie Mellon University. She has decades of experience in both industry and academia, with expertise in microscale heat transfer, multiscale multiphysics simulations and uncertainty quantifications, and she is the author of more than 280 technical papers and reports. Murthy received her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota, her master’s degree from Washington State University and a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology. Learn more about her »
