FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. --- Dr. Ashok Saxena, Regents’ Professor and former chair of the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, has been named dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Arkansas, effective July 21.

Saxena, 54, also will serve as distinguished professor of materials science and engineering and as graduate research chair for the college. He will succeed Dr. Neil M. Schmitt, University professor of electrical engineering, who has been serving as interim dean since July 1, 2002.

In addition, Saxena will become the first UA faculty member to hold an endowed chair funded by the $300 million gift from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation. As distinguished professor, Saxena also will hold the first of eight endowed graduate research faculty chairs. (Each research chair is funded through earnings from an endowment principal of $3 million.) He will have a base salary of $150,000, supplemented with $75,000 annually from gift earnings.

"Ashok Saxena is an internationally distinguished scientist, engineer, teacher and academic administrator, and he will provide superb leadership as we work to quickly increase the size, quality and impact of our College of Engineering," UA Chancellor John A. White said. "We are looking to Dean Saxena to increase engineering enrollments by more than 1,000 students and to recruit nationally prominent faculty to accommodate that growth. Our goal is to move the college quickly into the ranks of the top 50 engineering programs in the nation."

Saxena will report to Bob Smith, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, as is the case with all academic deans of the University.

"One of the most attractive aspects of Ashok Saxena’s appointment is that he will maintain a very active, high-profile research program that fits very nicely with emerging areas of expertise at the U of A and also has great promise for boosting the Arkansas economy." Smith said. "We look for him to greatly energize and lead the expansion of our engineering research and graduate programs, which are key building blocks of the knowledge- and technology-based economy Arkansas is striving to develop.

"We are most grateful to the search committee, chaired by Doyle Williams, dean of the Sam M. Walton College of Business, who worked tirelessly to produce such an outstanding finalist as Dr. Saxena," Smith added.

"I am honored and thrilled to have been selected for this leadership post," Saxena said. "The University of Arkansas has made impressive progress under John White’s leadership, and the College of Engineering is in very good position to make great strides in the years ahead. I look forward to working with the faculty, students, staff, and alumni to build on the good work that has been done thus far so that we can take the College to the highest level of quality and effectiveness."

Saxena’s scholarly activities over the past 30 years have been in the highly interdisciplinary field of mechanical behavior of materials, with primary emphasis on fracture mechanics. In fact, he is internationally renowned for his contributions to the area of time-dependent fracture mechanics and has pioneered the developments in this field since the late 1970s. His other research interests include creep, fatigue, microstructure-property relationships, composite materials, reliability and risk analysis, and life extension of aging structural components.

Besides conducting research in this key technological area, he has worked extensively with graduate students, developed and taught graduate and undergraduate courses in the field, and authored or co-authored 102 journal papers and book chapters, one undergraduate textbook and one graduate textbook, 30 conference proceeding papers, and numerous other technical reports.

Saxena’s awards and recognition include the George Irwin Medal (1992) from the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) for his pioneering contributions to creep fracture mechanics, the ASTM Award of Merit and Fellow (1994), Fellow of ASM Award (1996), and Georgia Tech Outstanding Research Author Award (1993).

Saxena received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and his M.S. (1972) and Ph.D. (1974) in materials science and metallurgical engineering from the University of Cincinnati.

His major industrial experience was at the Westinghouse Research and Development Center in Pittsburgh, where from 1974 to 1985 he rose to the rank of Fellow Scientist.

He joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 1985 as professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. From 1991-94 he served as director of Georgia Tech’s Composites Education and Research Center. He served as chair of the School of Materials Science and Engineering from 1993 until 2002 and was named Regents’ Professor in 2002.