Senior Vice President and Provost Andrew Sears announced today that Nikolaos Gatsonis, professor and head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering, has agreed to serve as interim dean of the School of Engineering, effective immediately. He will serve until our newly appointed permanent dean, Daniel Linzell, joins us in October. Dean Linzell succeeds John McNeill, who served as dean since 2018.

Professor Gatsonis brings to this role extensive academic leadership, deep institutional knowledge, and a strong record of research and educational innovation. As founding director and inaugural head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering, he has led the program’s growth from a concentration within mechanical engineering to a nationally ranked department with nearly 470 students. Under his leadership, the department has expanded its undergraduate and graduate programs, enrollment, and research enterprise.

Since joining WPI in 1994, Professor Gatsonis has held numerous leadership roles, including associate head of the mechanical engineering department and chair of multiple university-wide committees. He has played a key role in academic planning, faculty hiring and mentoring, and ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accreditation. His collaborative leadership and commitment to academic excellence have earned him wide respect.

Professor Gatsonis received his undergraduate degree in physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in Greece; a master’s in atmospheric science from the University of Michigan; and both a master’s in aeronautics and astronautics and a PhD in the physics of fluid and plasmas from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of fluid and plasma dynamics, with applications to areas including spacecraft micropropulsion, spacecraft-environment interactions, plasma devices and diagnostics, nanospacecraft attitude dynamics and control, and control/estimation with unmanned vehicles. He participated in several spacecraft propulsion development programs and space missions. 

His research has been supported by NASA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the National Science Foundation, among others. He also has a robust record of industrial collaborations through multiple Small Business Technology Transfer and Small Business Innovation Research programs. He has authored more than 125 publications and advised more than 30 graduate students, 10 postdoctoral fellows, and 60 undergraduate Major Qualifying Projects. He is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and serves as associate editor of the Aerospace Science and Technology Journal.