At the Order of the Engineer ring ceremony last February, Dean DeLisi congratulated computer systems major Valentine Ezike on his ascension to the ranks of professional engineer. In his new capacity as teacher and researcher, DeLisi will continue to play an active role in the life of the College and its students.

Dean Charles DeLisi has been a scientist for far longer than he's been an administrator -- since the third grade, in fact, when he picked up a book on astronomy in his Bronx classroom and found himself hooked. "It was called Earth, Sun, and Moon," he says, "and it absolutely fascinated me. It changed my view of my place in the world and gave me a perspective I'd never imagined. I joined the public library and started working my way through the science section."

It was the beginning of a lifetime of exploration, a journey that is now taking another turn, albeit in a familiar direction: back to the laboratory. After a successful nine-year tenure as dean, during which time the College blossomed into national eminence, DeLisi is leaving administration to return full time to research and teaching. The College is ready to take the next step, he says, and so is he.

"Organizations and people both need change," DeLisi says. "I've been in this

position nearly ten years, and when things are going well you tend to get locked in. But everything needs new ideas, fresh ideas, reinvigoration." He is leaving the helm with the College in "good condition," and he believes that the national search now under way for his replacement will result in "someone of great distinction" coming aboard to build on his legacy.

Doing the Numbers

"Good condition" is a characteristic DeLisi understatement. Under his watch, the faculty has increased from about 70 ("far too few for the number of undergraduates") to more than 100, with new members coming from such institutions as MIT, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Georgia Tech, Stanford, and Harvard. "One of the really exciting parts of this job is watching brilliant people join the College," he says, adding that for all the accomplishment of the new recruits, "the cordiality and selflessness that existed at the College when I got here" still exist; there are no "prima donnas."

And the commitment to undergraduate teaching is still very much in evidence. "It's always a risk when you hire people renowned for their research that the teaching may suffer. We worked hard to make sure that didn't happen," he says. The quality of the student body has improved too, with SATs of incoming freshmen up 90 points from when DeLisi arrived and GREs of entering graduate students up more than 100 points.

Getting Back in Circulation

DeLisi will now turn his attention to the research program that he struggled to sustain amid the responsibilities of the deanship. "It was getting increasingly difficult," he says. "It's a very competitive business, the grant business, and the more time you spend, the better off you are." Although he's kept his program going and even managed to squeeze in trips to Washington to advise federal scientific agencies, he's had to cut out many of the professional activities -- consultantships, editorialships, and advisory positions -- that engage scientists of his caliber. "After a while, when you're out of circulation as a scientist, it starts to affect what you're able to accomplish," he says.

Now, in addition to renewing many of his outside advisory obligations, he'll be running the University's new graduate program in bioinformatics, a multidisciplinary effort that was recently funded by a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. He'll also be devoting more time to Pharmadyne, a start-up company he founded that produces antiviral diagnostics and therapeutics.

Then there's his own research, which seeks to build systems that simulate cell behavior and shed light on the complex engineering problems involved in controlling that behavior. The goal: the development of drugs that can be targeted directly at the site of disease and nowhere else, allowing more effective healing and reducing or eliminating side effects. On top of all that, DeLisi will be teaching a spring course on thermodynamics, "an abstract and subtle subject that is difficult for teachers and students, but one that has great practical importance. You can really do a lot with it in the classroom."

So for DeLisi, the move out of the dean's office is clearly not a move away from the College of Engineering. "I hope the change for the College and the University will be an exciting one. I'm looking forward to watching that change happen and seeing what develops."