菠萝视频

By Nancy Wise

Don鈥檛 look to politicians, governments, nonprofits or even rock stars to solve societal problems鈥攍ook to engineers. That directive comes from , who became dean of the on July 1. Fauchet says human needs can be grouped into four core basics鈥攎edicine and health; energy and natural resources; security; and entertainment鈥攁nd engineering is part of each. 鈥淲e want to stay healthy, or if we are sick, we want to be cured. We want to be secure at all levels. We want to have access to electricity, clean water and everything else, and in our spare time, we want to be entertained,鈥� he says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 not a whole lot outside this.鈥�

Fauchet, 57, came to 菠萝视频 from the University of Rochester, where he had been chair of the electrical and computer engineering department and earned a reputation for combining diverse groups and interests into successful research centers. As its new dean, Fauchet wants 菠萝视频鈥檚 School of Engineering to expand its reach, reputation and impact by tackling important issues that matter to humanity.

鈥淲e have to work on hard problems that make a difference. There are hard problems that nobody cares about. I don鈥檛 want to spend resources there,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f you want to say, 鈥槻ぢ苁悠� helped solve this problem,鈥櫬� then we have to work on things people care about.鈥�

FOUR CORE STRENGTHS

Fauchet intends for the school to build on its existing expertise, research and collaborations to develop answers to societal problems in the four core areas.

He pinpoints specific security concerns, including safety of electronic records, nuclear issues, and bridge and road infrastructure. 鈥淎s we know, electronic data can be attacked and manipulated,鈥� he says. 鈥淧eople want to have safety and security there, and we need to develop systems that can sustain and resist attacks.鈥�

People also are concerned about nuclear waste. The School of Engineering contains two of the world鈥檚 leading research groups in those areas, and Fauchet foresees leveraging their expertise as problem solvers.

Fauchet says the school probably will focus most on the intersection of engineering and medicine and health. 鈥淗ealth means 鈥榣et鈥檚 try to keep you healthy in the first place.鈥� Can we use technologies, devices, systems to keep you healthy, to diagnose things early? Medicine is 鈥榣et鈥檚 help the doctor be as efficient as he or she can be in treating you,鈥欌�� Fauchet says.

菠萝视频 engineers are innovators in health and medicine research, and valuable collaborations with 菠萝视频 University Medical Center are ongoing, he notes. 鈥淲e are very fortunate because we can leverage the very strong, top-10 that we have here, with fantastic faculty members both on the research side and practitioner side. We want to build on that.鈥�

In continuing to outline his vision, Fauchet says the School of Engineering鈥檚 location in Nashville makes a focus on entertainment logical. To see the impact of technology on entertainment, one need only look at how the music industry moved from analog to digital and from the need for big, sophisticated recording studios to small, high-quality home studios.

鈥淗ere鈥檚 an example of where technical innovations profoundly impacted an industry,鈥� he says. 鈥淐learly, connections are to be made relating engineering to music. Now what can we do for that industry?鈥�

He also sees opportunity for computer science graduates in entertainment, educational filmmaking and gaming. 鈥淗ollywood has been hiring busloads of computer scientists at all sorts of different levels for very well-paying, exciting jobs,鈥� he says. Developing an entertainment core would appeal to undergraduate students in multiple engineering disciplines.

The final core need is finding engineering and scientific solutions to environmental and energy problems. 鈥淚n natural resources, one of the needs is to keep our water clean and make sure it remains abundant where people live,鈥� he says. 鈥淎nother issue is the huge gap that exists between the power production available today and what we鈥檒l need by 2050. We have no idea where that is going to come from.鈥�

INITIATOR AND PROBLEM SOLVER

Some of Fauchet鈥檚 own research could help make solar energy more affordable. For half his career, his work has focused almost exclusively on nanoscience and nanotechnologies with silicon, the second most abundant element on Earth and key to computer microprocessors. While much research for decades centered on perfecting the use of silicon in the computing industry, Fauchet and the students who worked with him focused on other possibilities, including development of silicon for use in better solar cells.

Fauchet鈥檚 research interests have changed during his 30-year career鈥攑art of the beauty of being an academic, he says. He moved into nanoscience research after initially studying the use of laser beams to modify materials and then using laser beams to characterize materials and measure properties. His education includes a Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University and a master鈥檚 degree in engineering from Brown University; he came to the United States after earning an undergraduate engineering degree in his home country of Belgium.

In addition to teaching, research, mentoring more than 40 doctoral students, and serving as an administrator, Fauchet also has established and led several multidisciplinary research centers. While on the faculty at Princeton University, he was one of the originators of the university鈥檚 Center for Photonics and Optoelectronic Materials. At Rochester he launched the multidisciplinary Center for Future Health, established the Femtosecond Laser Facility, and directed the Energy 菠萝视频 Initiative, which united and expanded university-wide research and educational efforts related to energy.

Fauchet still has ties to Rochester both professionally and personally. Because his position as dean leaves him no time for teaching and less for research, his research lab will not move to Nashville until next year. Two of his daughters remain in Rochester to finish their senior years in high school and college.聽Fauchet and his wife, Melanie, have 13 adopted and biological children ranging in age from the oldest at 23 to the youngest at nearly 3, including a 13-year-old adopted from Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. The youngest now reside south of Nashville with their parents, while four are away at college鈥攚here all but one are studying engineering.

REAL-WORLD NEEDS

The new engineering dean says that in order for 菠萝视频 to make an impact, the university鈥檚 culture of valuing and encouraging collaboration will be critical.

鈥淩eal-life problems are not bound to specific disciplines. Real-life problems care about finding the right team to solve them,鈥� Fauchet says. The right team, he says, will pull together engineering faculty and students from different departments, physicians from the Medical Center, sociologists from the , members of industry鈥攁nyone needed to solve those problems.

That emphasis on teamwork will also allow the school to produce noteworthy results. 鈥淏y developing stronger ties with other units within the campus and maybe with industry, we can actually do something that would be quite remarkable,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hat we are trying to do is strengthen the already existing collaborations and make Engineering the go-to place.鈥�