To Members of the McCormick Community:

As you are aware, several months ago President Bienen and I asked a screening committee, including members of various McCormick constituencies, to focus on the considerable talent represented within the McCormick faculty and to recommend persons who might ably fill the School deanship. Following receipt of the report of the screening committee, we, along with other administrative colleagues, met with each of the recommended candidates.

President Bienen and I have invited Julio Ottino to serve as dean of the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and I am very pleased to announce that he has accepted.   He will assume his position on March 28, 2004, the beginning of spring quarter.

The appointment of Julio Ottino to this position bespeaks President Bienen's and my high ambitions for and strong optimism about McCormick. Ottino is a person of international reputation who has had tremendous impact upon both his profession and our University. We are confident that his energy, creativity, vision and leadership, along with the efforts of the entire McCormick community, will help ensure that the McCormick School continues its progress toward an undisputed leadership position in engineering research and education.

The Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering since he joined the Northwestern faculty in 1991, Ottino has achieved distinction as a researcher and as an administrator.

A member of the National Academy of Engineering since 1997 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2003, Ottino has been widely recognized here and abroad for his research in the dynamics of fluids and granular matter. His work has appeared in cover-articles of such journals as Nature, Science, Scientific American, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ottino served as chair of Northwestern's Department of Chemical Engineering from 1992-2000. In addition, as a member of the 1998 and 2004 committees which helped fashion The Highest Order of Excellence I and II , he has been centrally involved in the University's strategic planning. He served ably as co-chair of an ad hoc group established by President Bienen to recommend future directions for the Basic Industry Research Laboratory (BIRL). Most recently, he has been instrumental in the creation of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO), of which he is currently co-director. He will step down from this leadership role in NICO no later than September 1.

Born in Argentina, Ottino pursued undergraduate studies there before enrolling in the University of Minnesota , where he received his PhD. He has served on the faculty at Minnesota and the University of Massachusetts and has held visiting chaired positions at the California Institute of Technology, Stanford, and Minnesota. Ottino has been associate editor of several professional journals, senior consultant to major multinational companies, and a member of numerous advisory boards, the most recent being the government-sponsored International Review of Engineering in the United Kingdom.

Ottino is the author of more than 150 research publications and has supervised the doctoral research of 30 students. His 1989 book the Kinematics of Mixing: Stretching, Chaos, and Transport (Cambridge University Press) is acknowledged as a classic in the field and has been reprinted several times, most recently last year. Recognition of Ottino's work includes the Alpha Chi Sigma and William H. Walker awards from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, appointment as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, and invitations to deliver named lectures at leading universities here and abroad.

President Bienen and I are grateful to the screening committee, chaired by Professor William White, for bringing to us an extraordinarily strong group of prospects for the position. We are also grateful to Joseph Schofer, who has served so ably as Interim Dean of McCormick.

Sincerely,

Lawrence B. Dumas
Provost