Dean Fauchet reappointed for five-year term

Fauchet was appointed dean of the School of Engineering in July 2012, coming from the University of Rochester. Over his nearly four-decades-long career, Fauchet has founded several multidisciplinary research centers and a successful startup company, SiMPore Inc.

In the last five years, undergraduate enrollment in the School of Engineering jumped by 15 percent and graduate enrollment by 11 percent. The school is experiencing negative attrition—meaning more students earn undergraduate engineering degrees than the cohort that declared the major as freshmen. In an increasingly competitive environment for grants, the school routinely attracts significant dollars—annual research expenditures are $67 million.

Since his arrival at Vanderbilt, the School of Engineering’s footprint has expanded, including the opening of the Laboratory for Systems Integrity and Reliability and the Multiscale Modeling and Simulation research facility. Most recently, Fauchet played an integral role in the opening of the university’s newest academic building, the Engineering and Science Building, which includes the Innovation Pavilion and the Wond’ry, the university’s innovation center.

Since Fauchet joined Vanderbilt, the school has strategically focused on a set of intellectual neighborhoods aimed at positioning the school to address society’s grand challenges and opportunities. Recently, they also launched the Emerging Scholars Lecture Series to create opportunities for bringing underrepresented groups to campus, an effort that has begun yielding fruit.

“I’ve loved the energy of my colleagues in the School of Engineering as we are continuing work to solve complex problems through research and discovery,” Fauchet said. “The faculty, staff and students are what make the school the collaborative, innovative place that it is. I’m excited to see what we can do in the next five years.”

Fauchet’s own research focuses on nanoscience and nanotechnology and their applications to domains such as medicine, sensing and energy. He has earned a number of awards and accolades and most recently was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, along with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Optical Society of America, the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE).

He is a widely published author, with more than 400 scientific publications, and a frequent speaker at scientific and technology meetings, with more than 100 invited or plenary presentations. He has served as an adviser to a number of governmental and non-governmental organizations in the United States and Europe.

Fauchet formerly served as chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Rochester. He received a doctorate from Stanford University and a master’s degree from Brown University. He taught at Stanford University, Princeton University and the University of Rochester prior to arriving at Vanderbilt.