Carnegie Mellon University named Pradeep K. Khosla, the Philip and Marsha Dowd Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Robotics, as dean of the College of Engineering (CIT), effective July 1. He succeeds John L. Anderson, who left in April to become provost of Case Western University.

A member of the CIT faculty since 1986 and a Carnegie Mellon alumnus, Khosla has invested enormous energy in the success of Carnegie Mellon and has demonstrated his leadership in research and education initiatives both within Carnegie Mellon and internationally. Khosla is currently head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (ECE) and co-director of CyLab, a university-wide initiative.

“Pradeep Khosla’s wide-ranging experience in research, teaching and creating meaningful partnerships with business and industry make him an excellent choice to lead our College of Engineering. Based on our past experience with his work, we expect great things of Pradeep,” said Jared L. Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon.

During his tenure as department head, ECE grew more than 80 percent in research volume, added 23 new faculty and defined several strategic multidisciplinary initiatives. The Computer Engineering graduate program was also ranked number one for the first time by U.S. News and World Report in the 2002 rankings.

“It is a great honor for me to be named head of Carnegie Mellon’s Engineering College because it is a very strong college with a long tradition of leadership in research and education. I am also very honored that I am following in the footsteps of several excellent deans whose leadership has made a difference,” Khosla said. He is extremely proud of his work on the “Wipe the Slate Clean” committee, which redefined the engineering degree at Carnegie Mellon. He developed the introductory freshman course that encourages hands-on engineering activity to pique the interest of students in the field.

His research covers a broad swath of activity including a focus on collaborating and distributed autonomous robotics systems, software composition and reconfigurable software for real-time embedded systems, and secure embedded software and information systems. Khosla received B. Tech. (Hons) from IIT (Kharagpur, India), and both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Carnegie Mellon.