Devesh Ranjan, a mechanical engineer and a leader at one of the country\u2019s largest and highest-ranked engineering programs, will be the tenth dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are very fortunate to bring an engineer with Professor Ranjan\u2019s energy and vision back to Madison,\u201d says Provost Charles Isbell Jr. \u201cHis commitment to people and paving the way for their success is a perfect fit for a time of growth at the College of Engineering.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ranjan, now the Eugene C. Gwaltney Jr. School Chair and Professor of Mechanical Engineering<\/a> at the Georgia Institute of Technology, remembers the promise he felt when he first arrived at UW\u2013Madison in 2003 to begin graduate school in the college he will now lead. He will begin on June 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve been blessed from that day onward,\u201d Ranjan says. \u201cThe thing I say about UW\u2013Madison is if you dream about doing something here, it will happen. It will happen because of the opportunity and the support here for you at UW\u2013Madison.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n After earning a doctorate at UW\u2013Madison in 2007 in the lab of Prof. Riccardo Bonazza, Ranjan was a Director\u2019s Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory before joining the faculty at Texas A&M University in 2009. He moved to Georgia Tech in 2014, where his own work has focused on the dynamics of fluids at very high speeds \u2014 air across the surface of supersonic jets, the plume of a volcanic eruption, shock waves that fragment kidney stones \u2014 and designing next-generation power cycles optimized for solar energy sources or incorporating the efficiency of supercritical carbon dioxide as in heat pumps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2021, Ranjan became a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, which presented him with its Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award for outstanding achievement in Mechanical Engineering in 2023. He was tapped for a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and US Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award in 2013 and became Georgia Tech\u2019s first recipient of a Department of Energy Early Career Award in 2016. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In January of 2022, he became School Chair of Georgia Tech\u2019s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, the campus\u2019s largest school, with nearly 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students and 95 faculty spread across 19 buildings. Under the pall cast by the COVID, Ranjan says, there was a distance \u2014 more than physical \u2014 growing between the members of the school\u2019s community. He set out to close that gap, with several community-building initiatives including Olympic-style games<\/a> that were so popular, they quickly grew to include faculty and staff members beyond the school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n People, first and foremost, are the strength of an institution like UW\u2013Madison\u2019s College of Engineering<\/a>, according to Ranjan. Investing in them and supporting their culture is the route to success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are a college which has absolutely phenomenal students both at undergraduate and graduate level. They are truly the best and the brightest in the world,\u201d he says. \u201cBut they also have amazing faculty and staff members to support them \u2014 people who have been there for 15, 20 years. They love the place. They really want to do bigger things with this new building coming in.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n