For Release Upon Receipt - July 13, 2006
Contact:
Michael Seele, 617-353-9766, mseele@bu.edu
Kira Jastive, 617-358-1240, kjastive@bu.edu
KENNETH LUTCHEN NAMED DEAN OF BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
(Boston) – Boston University Biomedical Engineering Department Chairman Kenneth Lutchen has been selected as the new dean of the College of Engineering, announced BU President Robert A. Brown.
“As chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, he has demonstrated the vision, creativity and drive needed to lead in a world-class academic research environment,” Brown said. “With Ken’s leadership, engineering at Boston University is well positioned to increase in quality and visibility in the years ahead.”
Solomon Eisenberg, a professor of Biomedical Engineering, served as ad interim dean since last fall.
Called “an inspiring leader” and “a dedicated and creative educator” by Provost David Campbell, Lutchen joined the university’s faculty in 1984 and became department chair in 1998. He has developed a significant list of accomplishments during his tenure at the college, most recently helping the biomedical engineering department obtain a $2.9 million Translational Partnership Award from the Coulter Foundation, designed to help bridge the gap between biomedical engineering and patient care. He was the principal investigator and chief architect of a $14 million Leadership Award from the Whitaker Foundation in 2001, used in part to construct the Life Science and Engineering Building.
“He has demonstrated all the characteristics of an outstanding academic leader,” said Campbell, the former dean of the college. “President Brown and I are very confident that he is the right choice to take the College of Engineering to still higher levels of excellence.”
Lutchen earned a doctorate in biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University and worked at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory before coming to BU. An expert in pulmonary physiology, he has written 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and has advanced methods for probing the structure-function relations governing lung disease. He has received both the college’s Professor of the Year Award and the Biomedical Engineering Professor of the Year Award.
“The College of Engineering has embraced a culture of a cross-disciplinary, team-oriented approach to research and education,” said Lutchen. “What excites me most is the opportunity to develop this culture, and our faculty, so that Boston University can have an important global impact in engineering education and new research.”
He is most proud, he says, of “the quality of the faculty that we have been able to put together” at the college and hopes to continue to “integrate biomedical engineering throughout so many other disciplines at BU.”
Lutchen lives in Brookline with his wife, Gayle, who is the assistant director for administration at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. He has four children, two of whom are BU undergraduates.
Kenneth Lutchen, Dean, BU College of Engineering
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