Butler and Modarres-Sadeghi Named Associate Deans

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Two College of Engineering faculty members have been named Associate Deans. Caitlyn Butler, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will serve as the new Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Affairs. Yahya Modarres-Sadeghi, Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, will serve as the new Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Operations. The two will transition into their new positions over the summer.

Caitlyn Butler is a leader in the area of biofilms and microbial ecology of engineered water systems. Among other contributions, she has been a campus and national leader in the development of SARS CoV-2 monitoring in wastewater streams, which is now expanding to sites across Massachusetts as well as other biohazards beyond COVID. She has been serving with distinction as the Associate Department Head and Graduate Program Director in Civil and Environmental Engineering for the past several years. Butler is a passionate champion for diversity, equity and inclusion, and is now serving as part of the UMass ADVANCE leadership team. She is a graduate of both the HERS and ELATES (Executive Leadership for Academic Technology, Engineering, and Science) national leadership training programs.

Yahya Modarres-Sadeghi is a leader in the understanding of fluid-structure interactions using experimental, theoretical and numerical techniques, with applications in diverse fields such as wind energy and biomedicine. He has served with distinction as the Graduate Program Director in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering for several years, and is presently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Fluids and Structures. In 2022-2023 he was a Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, one of only 50 practitioners to receive this highly prestigious fellowship, where he collaborated on the design of robotic fish to enable the study of behaviors in extreme ocean environments.  

The outgoing Associate Deans are Mike Knodler Jr. and Russ Tessier. Knodler Jr has served as the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Affairs since 2021 and Tessier has served as the Associate Dean/Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Operations since 2017. They made a tremendous impact on the college in these roles, and they will continue to make a tremendous impact: Tessier will continue to serve as the Department Head of Electrical and Computer Engineering, while Knodler Jr. will continue to serve as the William W. Boyer Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering as well as the Director of the UMass Transportation Center.