Rice names new dean of engineering

Rice names new dean of engineering

BY MARGOT DIMOND
Rice News staff

Sallie Keller-McNulty, group leader for the Statistical Sciences Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, will become the new dean of Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering in July.

Sallie Keller-McNulty

Keller-McNulty succeeds C. Sidney Burrus, who after seven years serving as dean is retiring from that position and as a tenured professor, but will continue teaching, writing and working with Rice’s new Connexions project.

“Choosing as an academic dean a group leader at Los Alamos may seem an out-of-the-box choice,” Rice President David W. Leebron said. “However, engineering needs out-of-the-box thinkers, and Rice and its engineering school have them. Our search committee, chaired superbly by Dean Kathleen Matthews, produced an outstanding group of finalists, and we selected the best for Rice.”

Said Rice Provost Eugene Levy: “We are thrilled to have recruited Sallie Keller-McNulty as Rice’s next dean of engineering. Sallie compiled a distinguished record of accomplishment and respect at Los Alamos and has built a strong reputation as an energetic and encouraging leader, wonderful at motivating others. She is also known for her ability to recruit and retain talented scholars.”

Keller-McNulty said she looks forward to her new position for many reasons, most of all the university’s collaborative culture — in particular, the way the engineering school works closely with Rice’s Wiess School of Natural Sciences and the Texas Medical Center.

“Rice is such a pre-eminent institution — not just because of its undergraduate education, but also because of its fabulous research programs,” she said. “Rice is leading the way in making interdisciplinary science a reality, and I’m a strong advocate for that as the way to move science forward in this century.”

Keller-McNulty will join Matthews, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences, making Rice the only major research university with women deans in both science and engineering.

Keller-McNulty has served in her current position at Los Alamos since 1998. Under her leadership, the size of the Statistical Sciences Group increased from 13 staff members to more than 40, and the budget quadrupled. She also has established a thriving visiting faculty program with several renowned statisticians spending their sabbaticals at the laboratory.

Before joining the Los Alamos group, Keller-McNulty was professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Statistics at Kansas State University (KSU). A faculty member since 1985, she also served as director of the Statistical Design and Analysis Unit for the KSU Institute of Social and Behavioral Research from 1990 to 1998 and was an adjunct professor in the Computer and Information Sciences Department from 1989 to 1995.

In addition, Keller-McNulty held a joint research fellowship of the American Statistical Association, National Science Foundation (NSF) and Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1996 to 1997 and served as program director for statistics and probability in the Division of Mathematical Sciences of the NSF from 1994 to 1996.

She was an assistant professor in the mathematics department at the University of North Carolina–Greensboro from 1983 to 1985. She earned her Ph.D. in statistics from Iowa State University and her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from the University of South Florida.

Keller-McNulty is the author of more than 60 statistical science publications and has co-authored a book, “Introduction to Probability and Systems Modeling.” Her areas of research are uncertainty quantification, computational and graphical statistics and related software and modeling techniques, and data access and confidentiality.

She has chaired the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics and has recently served on three other National Research Council committees: the Board of Mathematical Sciences and their Application; the National Research Council panel reviewing the Information Technology Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and the Committee on National Statistics on the Research on Future Census Methods. She is currently chair of a National Academy panel study on modeling and simulation for defense transformation.

Keller-McNulty is a fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and recipient of the prestigious ASA Founders Award and has recently been elected president of the ASA. She is an associate editor of Statistical Science and has served as associate editor of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics and the Journal of the American Statistical Association. She serves on several national advisory committees.

The search committee began reviewing candidates last summer. Finalists were interviewed by President David W. Leebron, as well as by Rice’s academic deans and vice presidents.

“The search committee was very impressed with Dr. Keller-McNulty’s energy and enthusiasm and her leadership accomplishments and abilities,” Matthews said. “She is known as a ‘dynamo’ within the statistical community, and her collaborative style and commitment to interdisciplinary connections are integral to her being described as the ‘best group leader’ at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Her links to Washington and service to the National Academies were perceived to bring important new dimensions and possibilities to Rice. We are delighted that she will be joining us.”

Search committee members included Pedro Alvarez, the George R. Brown Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Liliana Borcea, associate professor of computational and applied mathematics; Kathy Ensor, professor of statistics; undergraduate Chris Gibson; graduate student Jenni Greeson; Naomi Halas, the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and professor of chemistry; Eric Johnson, vice president for Resource Development; Ken Kennedy Jr., University Professor and the John and Ann Doerr Professor in Computational Engineering; Ed Knightly, associate professor in electrical and computer engineering and in computer science; Matthews, the Stewart Professor of Biochemistry; Kay McStay, senior department administrator in mechanical engineering and materials science; Antonios Mikos, the J.W. Cox Professor in Bioengineering and director of the Center for Excellence in Tissue Engineering; Marcia O’Malley, assistant professor in mechanical engineering and materials science; Matteo Pasquali, assistant professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering; W. Bernard Pieper ’53, Rice trustee emeritus; and James Tour, the Chao Professor of Chemistry, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and professor of computer science.