The UCF Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is pleased to announce that professor Reza Abdolvand, Ph.D., has been appointed chair of the department. His tenure will begin Aug. 8, 2022.
“I am humbled and honored by the trust that the search committee, my colleagues, and the dean have placed in me. Our department has grown significantly over the past few decades, and I am committed to dedicate my time and energy to nourish the seeds that are planted by my predecessors while looking for new opportunities to better serve our student population, our industrial partners, and our dedicated faculty and staff.”
Dr. Abdolvand received his Ph.D. in 2008 from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, then joined Oklahoma State University as an assistant professor before joining UCF in 2014. His primary area of research lies in the general field of micro-electro-mechanical systems with a focus on piezoelectric microsystems. Dr. Abdolvand is credited worldwide to have developed a class of micro-devices that he has coined as thin-film piezoelectric-on-substrate resonators. He holds 12 issued U.S. patents, plus two pending applications, on this and other relevant technologies.
He has managed more than $4M in research funding, about half from industry, and contributed to more than $8M in funding. Dr. Abdolvand has graduated eight Ph.D. and eight MS students in addition to teaching nine different courses and serving more than 1,600 students, earning high teaching evaluations. He has served the profession in several ways, including on the editorial board of Micromachines Journal, as a member of technical committees of several conferences, as an NSF panel reviewer and as a reviewer of multiple journals.