Bantz Announces New Chief Academic Officer for IUPUI

New Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean of Faculties, Uday Sukhatme

INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Chancellor Charles R. Bantz today announced that physicist Uday Sukhatme, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, will be the next executive vice chancellor and dean of faculties, pending approval by the IU Board of Trustees.

Bantz said Dr. Uday Sukhatme was selected for the post after a rigorous national search and with overwhelming support from the search committee and the faculty. He will succeed William M. Plater, who will become the founding director of the Workshop on International Community Development, a newly focused initiative to combine and coordinate efforts in international community development.

“I am delighted with the acceptance of Dr. Sukhatme,” Bantz said. “He is extremely well qualified for the position, given his experience at two urban research universities, his very strong record as a funded scientist, and his collaborative leadership style.

“It is clear that he will be able to provide leadership in advancing health and life sciences at IUPUI and has demonstrated the ability to lead strategic initiatives in arts and sciences,” Bantz added.

“I am delighted to join IUPUI, and have the opportunity to work with the students, staff, faculty and administration to further increase IUPUI's reputation as a first-rate urban research university,” Sukhatme said. “I particularly look forward to formulating programs and events for the Indianapolis community which showcase IUPUI's strong academic reputation.”

Sukhatme, who will assume his duties as the chief academic officer of IUPUI in July, has been dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of Physics at SUNY at Buffalo since August 2002. Prior to that, Sukhatme was at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) for 22 years, where he served as Interim Vice Provost for Academic Programs, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, and head of the Department of Physics.

At Buffalo, he has been instrumental in guiding the College of Arts and Sciences through a period of remarkable growth. Among his accomplishments are a 20% growth in faculty size via a very aggressive hiring plan, and a 60% growth in research funding in the past three years. The College has also made a strategic plan to establish and enhance several "signature centers of excellence," an effort which has generated new excitement and avenues for interdisciplinary research.

Sukhatme holds a S.B. and a Sc.D. degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and a B.Sc. (Honors) degree in Mathematics from the University of Delhi, India. His area of specialization is theoretical physics. His research in high-energy phenomenology and supersymmetric quantum mechanics has been funded continuously by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy for the past 22 years and has led to over 180 publications in physics journals. Among his publications are 13 that have been included in the top-cited category in citation databases, an indication of their impact in the discipline of physics.

At the University of Illinois at Chicago, Dr. Sukhatme was also one of the principal investigators on a five year, $2.5 million project funded by the National Science Foundation aimed at improving minority enrollment in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology disciplines.