Professor Mohammod Ali will begin his tenure as Electrical Engineering Department chair, effective August 1. He takes over for Professor Roger Dougal, who has served as department chair since 2012.
“I would like to thank Professor Roger Dougal for doing an excellent job over the years while being active in research and teaching at the same time. I am very grateful to the Electrical Engineering Department faculty and staff for their support and the dean for offering me this opportunity,” Ali says.
“I look at my new role as an opportunity to serve our students for them to experience a world-class learning environment and feel that they are ready to take on the challenges that our nation faces, whether working in industry, government or other sectors.”
- Mohammod Ali, Electrical Engineering
According to Ali, his short-term goals include taking a holistic look at the undergraduate curriculum, based on market, national and societal needs, and making necessary improvements based on conversations and input from faculty. He will also focus on exploring and developing concrete strategies to increase undergraduate enrollment.
“We must stay focused and execute our strategies to attract and recruit new students,” Ali says. “I believe that if we offer a good product, in this case, solid education that is beneficial, students and their families are likely to find value into it.”
Ali hopes to regularly recruit and add new faculty members to complement and enhance existing strengths and work to best assist them in successful proposal development and grant seeking efforts.
“Education and research are integral to each other. I will explore options to grow the department’s faculty strengths by hiring in strategically important areas to fulfill the educational and research missions of the department and the college,” Ali says.
Associate Vice President for Research and Vice Dean Michael Matthews says that Ali’s experience and diverse career pathways bring a well-rounded perspective to his new leadership role.
“He has worked in industry, received invaluable research experience with the Air Force research labs, and most recently served as a program director at the National Science Foundation. He is equipped to support junior faculty as well as students and to provide broad vision to the department,” Matthews says.
Prior to joining the college in August 2001, Ali worked for Ericsson Inc. in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina from 1998 to 2001. In addition to his duties at the college, he has worked as program director at the NSF under an Intergovernmental Personnel Act assignment in the Division of Electrical, Communications, and Cyber Systems for the Directorate of Engineering since July 2019. Ali has authored or co-authored over 200 representative publications with eight patents. His research has been funded by organizations including the Department of Energy, Air Force Research Laboratory and the Boeing Company. Ali’s research interests include conformal, reconfigurable and smart antennas, bio-electromagnetic, and wireless sensors for infrastructure health monitoring.
Ali received his B.Sc. in electrical and electronic engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka. He received his M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.