Indian-American material scientist and engineer, Prof. Arjun Majumdar, has been appointed as the inaugural Dean of Stanford University’s new school that focuses on climate change and sustainability.
Prof. Majumdar is currently the Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor, a faculty member of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, and Senior Fellow and former director of the Precourt Institute for Energy.
In a media release Prof. Majumdar said that he is “deeply honoured and humbled by the opportunity to serve as the inaugural dean.””
He added: “Building on the extraordinary leadership of transitions deans, Kam Moler and Steve Graham, we will not only harness the intellectual horsepower of our students, faculty, and staff across our campus, but we will also partner with external organisations around the world to co-develop innovative solutions and identify new insights through research and education.”
Prof. Majumdar is originally from Kolkata and received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1985.
He completed a Ph.D. from the University of California – Berkeley in 1989 and worked as the vice president for energy at Google. Here, Prof. Majumdar assembled a team to create technologies and businesses at the intersection of data, computing, and electricity grid.
Prof. Majumdar was even nominated for the position of Under Secretary of Energy in the United States between November 30, 2011 and May 15, 2012 but then the nomination was retracted.
He later joined Stanford in 2014 and became the founding director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E).
Prof. Majumdar currently serves as the chair of the advisory board to the US Secretary of Energy.
He believes: “As is often said, we do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children. We must collectively figure out how to create a future where humans and nature thrive together.”
Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability is university’s first new school in 70 years and its key goal is to speed up options to the worldwide local weather disasters. This new school has received a gift of $1.1-billion venture capitalist John Doerr and his wife, Ann.
This is one of the largest single donations to an American institute of higher education and Prof. Majumdar will assume his new position on June 15.