HP Names Dean of University of Illinois at Chicago, Prith Banerjee, as Director of HP Labs

I leave UIC with a very sad heart. I could not have asked for better colleagues than you in the College of Engineering. UIC has treated me very, very nicely in the past three years, and has welcomed and supported my rather creative, and sometimes ambitious ideas for the College. I feel that we have jointly made a lot of progress in our ambitious Strategic Plan during the past three years. They include:

1. Recruiting 12 excellent faculty from top universities, including 5 women, and two members of the National Academy of Engineering.
2. Increasing the undergraduate enrollment from 1550 to 1700 (expected in Fall 2007) while increasing the quality of the students
3. Emphasizing graduate education with a direct Ph.D. program with a 5 year funding model, and increasing the number of Ph.D. graduates from 35 to 60 (expected in 2007).
4. Promoting large, collaborative, interdisciplinary research in the areas of Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, Information Technology and Energy/Infrastructure technology; being successful in five large grants at $2 million to $5 million each, and preparing for several NSF Engineering Research Center grants.
5. Creating Technology Centers as a way to bring in short-term industry research projects, and providing a WIN-WIN-WIN situation for industry, students and university; we were successful in getting Board of Trustees approval for this innovative concept and in bringing contracts worth $640,000 in the first year of operations.
6. Having moderate success with fund raising with Chairs and Professorships for faculty, scholarships for our undergraduate students, and research funding for the DOE Bioengineering Institute, NSF ADVANCE grant to recruit women faculty, and the Motorola Innovation Center.

I thank you all for your support in the past three years. I think the College of Engineering is on an upward trajectory, and I wish the College even more success in the years to come.

I will start work at HP on August 1, 2007 and plan to be at UIC for the next three months (until July 31) as the Provost appoints a new Dean so that I can support an easy transition to the new leadership.

In my new role, I hope to promote improved ties between HP and UIC.

Best wishes to all.

Prith Banerjee
Dean, College of Engineering and
UIC Distinguished Professor
University of Illinois at Chicago
Room 838 SEO
851 South Morgan Street
Chicago, IL 60607-7043
Ph: (312) 996-2400
Fax: (312) 996-8664
Cell: (847) 757-8708
EMAIL: prith@uic.edu
URL: www.uic.edu/~prith