Alissa Park named dean of UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
AcademicFaculty and StaffAh-Hyung “Alissa” Park has been named the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. Her appointment will begin Sept. 1.
Park, one of the nation’s leading experts on carbon capture and conversion technology, is currently the Lenfest Earth Institute Professor of Climate Change and chair of the department of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia University, where she has been a faculty member since 2007. She also is director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, an executive committee member of The Earth Institute and Columbia Climate School, and a member of Columbia’s department of chemical engineering.
“Chancellor Block and I are confident that under Alissa’s visionary leadership, UCLA Samueli will make even greater strides in advancing engineering education and research for the benefit of our society,” Darnell Hunt, UCLA’s executive vice chancellor and provost, wrote in a message to the campus.
At Columbia, Park created highly interdisciplinary research and educational programs in sustainable energy and decarbonization, including the CarbonTech Development Initiative for translational decarbonization research, a collaboration between the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy and the Center on Global Energy Policy. She also substantially improved the diversity of the faculty and student bodies within her units, and she led efforts to achieve a cultural shift toward equity, inclusion and respect.