Lehigh University Names New Dean of Engineering; Expert in Optimization, David Wu, Appointed Dean.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- David Wu, Iacocca Professor and chair of the industrial and systems engineering department at Lehigh University, has been named dean of the university's P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Wu's appointment was announced by Mohamed El-Aasser, who served as Lehigh's engineering dean before his appointment Nov. 1 as university provost.

"I believe David Wu will be an outstanding dean," said El-Aasser. "In six years as chair of industrial and systems engineering (ISE), he has overseen a marked improvement in his department's national reputation. He has also earned a reputation as an effective mentor of new faculty and graduate students while gaining international renown for his research in optimization, logistics and supply chain modeling. I am confident that, with his team-building leadership style, David will help take the Rossin College and the university to the next level of educational excellence."

Wu, a native of Taiwan, joined Lehigh's faculty in 1987 and became chair of the industrial and systems engineering (ISE) department in 1998. He holds a B.S. degree from Taiwan's Tunghai University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Penn State University.

In six years as ISE department chair, Wu helped establish new interdisciplinary academic programs and research centers, while gaining international renown for his research in optimization, logistics and supply chain modeling.

As engineering dean, he will preside over a college with 110 faculty members, 1,350 undergraduate majors and 670 graduate students.

Wu said people would be the central focus of his plans for the future of the engineering college.

"At the most fundamental level, my vision for the college is about people. I will work to cultivate a dynamic and intellectually powerful environment where faculty strive to be leading scholars and fully engaged educators, where students are challenged to be independent thinkers and future leaders, and where the staff are inspired to be enthusiastic enablers and innovators."

Wu said he would continue efforts to broaden the scope of engineering education at Lehigh. In addition to becoming well-versed in their major fields, he said, engineering students should acquire knowledge in the emerging fields of bio-, nano- and information technologies and also in business, economics, humanities, social sciences, cross-cultural studies and communications.

A more diverse curriculum, he said, would prepare students to become multi-faceted technical coordinators and global team leaders.

Wu gave those efforts a boost in 1999 when he helped obtain a grant from the National Science Foundation to establish the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training program.

IGERT is a collaboration between the ISE department and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business that trains Ph.D. students to become international leaders in manufacturing logistics. IGERT fellows receive a tuition waiver, stipend and educational expenses to cover an industrial internship in the U.S. and an academic internship overseas.

Wu chaired a task force that led to the development of Lehigh's undergraduate program in integrated business and engineering (IBE), which is a collaboration between the engineering college and the College of Business and Economics. He helped develop the new M.S. program in analytical finance, which is a three-college partnership between the ISE, finance and mathematics departments, and he served on the committee that planned the new Global Citizenship program.

Wu is also co-founder and co-director of the Center for Value Chain Research, which was launched in 2002. The CVCR superseded the Manufacturing Logistics Institute, which Wu also founded.

As ISE department chair, Wu led the efforts to create the new B.S. and M.S. programs in information and systems engineering (I&SE). He has helped organize weekly seminar series, lectures and workshops that have brought more than 150 scholars and professionals to campus since 1998.

A specialist in optimization and logistics, Wu studies the interactions of suppliers, buyers and service providers in a supply chain. He uses computer algorithms to model basic economic interactions - the splitting of profits, the coordination of activities, and networking - to more effectively solve problems that arise. His efforts are aimed particularly at activities that occur online and involve hundreds of decision-makers.

Wu has received research grants from NSF, Sandia National Laboratories, the U.S. Air Force, Agere and Lucent Technologies. He has published more than 80 journal articles and served as editor or referee on a dozen journals in his field.

"Handbook of Quantitative Supply Chain Analysis: Modeling in the E-Business Era," a book Wu co-edited with two colleagues, was published earlier this year by Kluwer Academic Publishers.

About Lehigh

Lehigh University, which is consistently ranked as one of the best private universities in the United States, combines the power of a leading research university with the personal approach of a smaller college. In Lehigh's four colleges -- College of Education, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Business and Economics and the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science -- 6,500 students discover and grow in a learning community that promotes interdisciplinary programs with real-world applications. Located in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, the university is centrally situated between Washington and Boston and is less than 90 miles from both New York and Philadelphia.