Engineering Continues Expansion

The Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS) will submit a report in February with a concrete proposal to aggressively expand engineering research and study at Harvard, building on plans described last year to increase faculty size by one-third and possibly rededicate itself as a “school” of engineering.

The proposals are designed to make Harvard more competitive with other universities, including Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which have traditionally devoted more resources to engineering, according to DEAS Dean Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti.

“We did not invest for years. It should have been more important earlier...I think it would be a terrible mistake if we didn’t invest in it more,” Venky said.

He said he plans to implement the changes, which will cost at least half a billion dollars, over the next 10 years. He also said he is currently working on a written proposal that will formalize the plans, which will be presented to a committee of Harvard’s Board of Overseers next February.

Administrators argue that the expansion of engineering is especially important today, as technology becomes more important in everyday lives.

“In engineering, in fields like computer science, thanks to Venky’s leadership, we’re in a much stronger position than we were five years ago,” University President Lawrence H. Summers told The Crimson in June. “But I hope and expect to be in a much stronger position five years from now.”

Venky said that technology is “really important in daily life” and “unless Harvard is really strong in those disciplines, we will not be able to be really good in other sciences.”

The most significant proposed change would entail expanding the faculty from the current 62 full-time equivalent (FTE) faculty to approximately 100 FTEs over the next decade.

“If [the faculty] did become a greater size, we will automatically become somewhat more prominent,” Venky said.

The Faculty has already grown from 50 to 62 FTEs since Venky came to Harvard in 1998, while Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) William C. Kirby has made it a priority of his to grow the entire FAS, not just engineering, in the coming years.

He said a larger faculty will allow the division to recruit more undergraduates and, as its reputation grows, more high-quality professors.

There are currently 275 graduate students studying engineering and applied sciences at Harvard, Venky said, a number he hopes to double over the next decade. He said he also hopes to increase the number of undergraduate concentrators in the division, which currently has 350 concentrators.

Venky said that it has not yet been decided whether the DEAS will become a school unto itself, but he did not dismiss the idea, saying that “there is some merit to that in terms of visibility.”

He said that even if a new school is formed, it will still remain closely tied to the College.

“What I actually envision is something very unique. Something which has very strong continued ties with Harvard College and the other sciences,” he said, describing what he saw as a “connector between basic research in the sciences with the world of technology.”

Venky said the school would become the only Harvard professional school with undergraduates, and the only one that retains a strong integration with the sciences.

Harvard’s plan to build a new campus in Allston may likely play a large part in the growth of the engineering division.

“If we grow significantly there will be some expansions in Allston,” Dean Venky said, though he added that “I’m not imagining that all of engineering will be moving.”

The Allston Science and Technology Task Force, charged with considering the future of science at Harvard in light of expansion across the Charles, recommended last May that the University commit to a significant expansion in several fields, including engineering.

The report said Harvard “is significantly under-invested in technology; most notably its engineering efforts, though qualitatively strong, are much smaller than those of our competitor institutions by almost any measure.”

“Harvard must grow engineering and applied sciences,” the report said.

Venky said he is confident Harvard would achieve that goal.

“In certain selective areas, we should be second-to-none,” he said, citing the interfacing between engineering and biology, and the study of applied physics and material sciences, as two such areas.

“We are still under-invested, but at least now we have a presence,” he said. “I’m going to work my tail off to make us the best in selective areas.”

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.