Kofinas Named Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Graduate Programs

Starting this fall, Fischell Department of Bioengineering (BioE) professor Peter Kofinas will take on a new role for the A. James Clark School of Engineering as he becomes the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Graduate Programs. Kofinas, BioE's Associate Chair and Director of Graduate Studies, will continue with his bioengineering research and teaching responsibilities, but conclude his departmental associate chair and graduate studies work.

As associate dean, Kofinas will manage Clark School faculty activity and workload reports, merit review, overload requests and other matters; serve as equity officer; coordinate the APT process and unit reviews; direct the Future Faculty Program; and perform many other administrative tasks.

Kofinas’s highly cited research, presented in many major publications, focuses on the use of nanostructured functional polymers in applications ranging from medicine and pharmaceuticals to energy storage and microelectronics. He serves on review panels for nearby federal agencies and has pursued numerous entrepreneurial opportunities associated with his work.

Kofinas has won the NSF CAREER award and the Clark School's Outstanding Junior Faculty Teaching Award, and was selected as a Keystone Professor. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and a Master of Science degree in chemical engineering practice, as well as a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the Program in Polymer Science and Technology.

Over the course of his 16 years with the Clark School, he has been active in administrative service outside of his past and present departments, including serving a term as Chair of the Clark School's Appointments, Promotion and Tenure (APT) committee, and serving as a member of both a Tenure Appeals Committee and the Provost's Academic Planning and Advisory Committee (APAC).

Kofinas feels experiences like these, and his work as BioE's Associate Chair and Director of Graduate Studies, have prepared him for his newest administrative challenge. "I am very excited for this opportunity to serve the college in both Faculty Affairs and Graduate Studies," he says.

Kofinas' colleagues, Department of Aerospace Engineering professor Alison Flatau and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering associate professor Nuno Martins, will assume the Clark School posts of Interim Associate Dean of Research and Maryland Robotics Center director, respectively. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Institute for Systems Research professor Satyandra K. Gupta, who formerly directed the Maryland Robotics Center, will go on inter-governmental personal act assignment to serve as program director in the Robust Intelligence Cluster within the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems at the National Science Foundation.

For more information about Professor Kofinas and his research, visit his web site »

Published September 7, 2012