Biography

DAVIS, CA­­­; July 8, 2015–Jennifer Sinclair Curtis has been named as the Dean of the UC Davis College of Engineering effective October 19, 2015.  Curtis currently serves as the Associate Dean for Research and Facilities at the University of Florida’s College of Engineering.  She will replace Interim Dean Jean VanderGheynst who graciously agreed to serve effective July 1, 2015, in the wake of former 

In 1961, after the Bay of Pigs invasion when approximately 1,200 prisoners were held hostage in Cuba, Fidel Castro offered a trade with the United States: He would release most of the captives in exchange for 500 tractors. To negotiate this famous “Tractors for Prisoners” trade, an “unofficial” group of U.S. delegates was sent to Havana — “unofficial” to support the federal government’s claim that it hadn’t been involved in the invasion.

Some people simply aren’t allowed to retire.

After having served as dean of the UC Davis College of Engineering from 1983 to 1996, Mohammed S. Ghausi probably felt that it was time to relax. No such luck: Then-Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef pulled Ghausi back into the UC Davis fold for an additional year, to simultaneously serve as interim Vice Chancellor for Research, Dean of Graduate Studies and Vice Provost for University Outreach.

When Alan Laub accepted his position as the fourth dean of the UC Davis College of Engineering in October 1996, he demonstrated a talent for prescience:

“Just as the physical sciences have formed the cornerstone of engineering in the 20th century,” he said, “the biological, computational and information sciences will play an equally fundamental role in the 21st century.”

George Tchobanoglous, a professor emeritus in the UC Davis Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, worries about how to deal with what we leave behind.

When Enrique Lavernia served as emcee for UC Davis’ Centennial Convocation in September 2008, he made a point — before discussing the upcoming program or introducing any speakers — of acknowledging the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, then celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Robert W. Bower, an emeritus professor in the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, lives in a realm of acronyms. Within his field, he is famous for having developed a self-aligned gate MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known as a SAGFET. Bower patented this design in 1969, during his tenure at California’s Hughes Research Laboratory.

Put more simply, Bower invented and refined the basic transistor structure used in the vast majority of computer and memory chips: the world’s most replicated artificial structure.

I.M. Idriss, a UC Davis professor emeritus of geotechnical engineering, was on the second floor of a San Francisco high-rise when the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake struck on Oct. 17, 1989. As colleagues dove for cover beneath a conference table, Idriss stood in a doorway … where he had a perfect view of buildings swaying in response to the forces he had studied throughout his career.

One morning in the spring of 2007, as UC Davis Professor Emeritus Zuhair Munir was teaching his undergraduate course, “Introduction to Materials Science,” the proceedings were interrupted when Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef entered the classroom to surprise Munir with a presentation of the UC Davis Foundation Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement. The prize, created to celebrate the very best in teaching and scholarship at UC Davis, included a cash award of $35,000.