The interim dean of the UC Davis College of Engineering will be Zuhair Munir, a UC Davis faculty member since 1972 and the engineering college's current associate dean for research and graduate studies.
Munir will lead the college until a permanent replacement is found for resigning dean Alan Laub, who has been at Davis for four years. Campus administrators say they hope to have the new dean in place by July 2001.
"Associate Dean Munir brings to the deanship a wealth of experience as a faculty member and long-time administrator in the college," said UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef on Wednesday in a letter to the engineering faculty. "Provost [Robert] Grey and I are confident that he will provide effective leadership for the college during this transitional year."
Munir's first major responsibility as interim dean will be to coordinate the evaluation visit of the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology, the accrediting body for university undergraduate programs in engineering. That visit, which occurs every four years, is scheduled for early November.
"I am looking forward to working with the faculty and staff of the college and with the campus administration to maintain the momentum of the college and to ensure a successful accreditation visit," Munir said Tuesday from Montreal, where he was attending a conference on nanomaterials.
Munir received his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 1956, his master's degree in materials science in 1958, and his Ph.D. in materials science in 1963, all at UC Berkeley.
Munir has received many awards and honors, including the Medal of Honor from the International Organization of Combustion Synthesis, the National Science Foundation Creativity Award and election to the International Academy of Ceramics. He is a fellow of the American Ceramic Society and of the American Society for Metals. He has also received several awards for teaching excellence, including the American Society for Engineering Education Award. Munir is editor in chief of The Journal of Materials Synthesis and Processing, author of more than 290 scholarly papers and holder of nine patents.
In addition to his responsibilities as interim dean, Munir will continue his very active research program. He has research grants totaling more than $1 million from many sources, including the National Science Foundation, NASA and the Army Research Office. His research group has 11 graduate and undergraduate students and two postdoctoral fellows.
One new grant from NASA, for about $500,000, was allotted to study the effects of electrical fields on materials synthesis and processing under microgravity. One of Munir's doctoral students soon will be conducting some of these experiments in a NASA airplane that simulates weightlessness by flying in steep dives and climbs. In this work, Munir is collaborating with a Canadian company and the Daimler-Chrysler Corp. in Germany.
Another new Munir project, funded by the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States, is working to develop asbestos-free brake pads for cars. And in a collaboration with researchers in France and Italy, Munir is trying to develop nanomaterials (made of particles so small that most of their atoms are at or near the surface) in bulk, solid forms for potential use in the manufacture of aircraft, automobiles and computers.
The UC Davis College of Engineering prospered under Alan Laub's leadership, improving in national rankings each year and doubling research support to $40 million annually. The college has 2,800 undergraduate and 750 graduate students, 160 faculty members and 170 staff members. It offers the largest number of accredited engineering majors in the UC system.