April 14, 2025 Spring 2025 message from Dean Ian Robertson Written By: Ian Robertson Greetings alumni and friends! In March 2013, I began my role as the ninth dean of the College of Engineering. I inherited a thriving college from my predecessor, Paul Peercy. Over the next dozen years, I had the privilege of building upon the foundation he and others laid—a tradition of meaningful research, excellence in education, and a commitment to improving society that dates to our university’s formative years. My accomplishments as dean are successes I share with many others: campus colleagues, our college and department leaders, hundreds of dedicated staff; passionate faculty members, researchers and educators; students at all levels, our board members, and last—but certainly not least, our alumni. Through your wisdom, encouragement and support, all of you have helped to shape and support our vision for an even better engineering college. Together, we planned and carried out renovations of instructional and laboratory spaces across our college—and many of these upgraded facilities bear the names of our industry partners, alumni and friends, whose generous support reflects a deep commitment to our college’s mission. Importantly, we secured state support for a new engineering building, and we’ve currently raised more than $120 million in gifts for our portion of its funding. Over time, we’ve recruited more than 130 early-career and established faculty members, and they’ve contributed an incredible level of expertise and excitement to our college. They are as passionate about teaching as they are productive in research. As a result, our research expenditures have grown to approximately $140 million annually, while the number of inventions we disclose each year now exceeds 140. With gifts from our alumni and friends, we’ve also established more than 100 new professorships to help recognize and retain our faculty. Private support allowed us to launch the Grainger Institute for Engineering to connect industry, government and community partners with college and campus resources and experts. The institute is leading our college’s efforts in semiconductor science, and it has helped to facilitate community-based energy initiatives that have received more than half a billion dollars in funding. Recognizing the importance of industry partnerships in our education and research activities, along with a growing need to formalize an environment that facilitates and celebrates entrepreneurship, we founded the Technology Entrepreneurship Office in collaboration with the College of Letters and Science and the School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences. Through gift funding, we also established the Center for Innovation in Engineering Education so that we can continue to improve the way we teach engineers. Through millions of dollars in gifts, we’ve been able to recruit, assist and reward thousands of deserving engineering undergraduate and graduate students through scholarships and fellowships. We enhanced our instruction methods, diversified the ways in which our students learn, and expanded and evolved our programs so that our students’ education is always relevant. We’ve intensified our college’s focus on creating a welcoming, inclusive environment, ensuring that all members of our college—faculty, staff and students—have access to the services and holistic support they need to thrive and to realize their goals. We created a well-received community-building welcome event for new students, as well a widely anticipated formal graduation-style event, held at the Kohl Center, to recognize and celebrate our graduates. Everything I’ve mentioned (and much more) is not only an investment in our college’s future—but also reflects our dedication to developing people and elevating lives through engineering. It has been my privilege to serve the College of Engineering—to meet our students, faculty, staff, alumni, industry partners, government officials, members of our community. I am grateful for each one of you and the ways in which you enriched my own life. Thank you for your support—and for the countless ways you have helped to shape our college and position it for future success. Now, I am proud and honored to welcome Devesh Ranjan, the 10th dean of our great college! On, Wisconsin! Ian RobertsonGrainger Dean of the College of EngineeringDedicated to fostering the highest standards of integrity, ethics, inclusiveness, and service to society.