In June 2025, Devesh Ranjan became the Grainger Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the 10th dean in college history.
In this role, he is responsible for one of the nation’s top engineering colleges, which includes eight academic departments, more than 6,100 students and 220 faculty, annual research expenditures exceeding $120 million, and more than 140 invention disclosures annually.
Since 2014, he has been a professor of mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 2021, he served as Georgia Tech interim vice president for interdisciplinary research, overseeing and supporting interdisciplinary activities including the interdisciplinary research institutes; the Pediatric Technology Center, the Novelis Innovation Hub, the Center for Brain Imaging, and the Global Center for Medical Innovation. In 2022, he was named the Eugene C. Gwaltney Jr. School Chair of Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.
Prior to his tenure at Georgia Tech, Ranjan was the Morris E. Foster Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University from 2009 to 2014, and a director’s research fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2008.
Ranjan’s interdisciplinary research focuses on power conversion, complex fluid flows, and the turbulent mixing of materials in extreme conditions such as supersonic and hypersonic flows.
He has received numerous awards for his scientific contributions, including a U.S. Department of Energy early-career award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and a U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research young-investigator award. In 2016, Ranjan was invited to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers in Engineering Symposium. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and received its Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award for outstanding achievement in Mechanical Engineering in 2023. An avid educator and passionate mentor, he also has earned several honors for teaching excellence and mentoring.
Ranjan holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the National Institute of Technology-Trichy, India, and master’s and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.