Dear colleagues,
I am pleased to announce that Matthew Mench, Condra Chair of Excellence and professor of mechanical engineering in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, has been selected to serve as the next dean and Wayne T. Davis Dean’s Chair of the Tickle College of Engineering. He begins July 1. He has served as interim dean since early March.
Matthew joined UT in 2010, after serving as an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Pennsylvania State University. He became department head of MABE in August 2013 and has served in that role ever since. In 2019, Matthew stepped up to serve as interim vice chancellor for research for almost a year before returning to MABE.
Matthew brings a distinguished record as a researcher and outstanding success as a department head to his new role. He has deep and broad institutional knowledge, a demonstrated commitment to continuing the work of diversity and inclusion in the college, and emphatic support from all of the college’s stakeholders.
As dean, Matthew will oversee a rapidly growing college that in little more than a decade has doubled in key areas of overall enrollment, doctoral enrollment, graduation, faculty endowments, and research, and now has several departments ranked in or near the top 30 among public programs of engineering.
Matthew’s research interests include electrochemical power storage and conversion systems such as fuel cells, electrolyzers, and batteries. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He previously served as an associate editor for the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy and the ASME Journal of Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage. In 2020, he was honored as a Chancellor’s Professor.
He received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from Penn State in 1994, 1996, and 2000, respectively.
I look forward to working with Matthew and his colleagues to educate future engineers, meet grand challenges in research, and build the workforce of the future.
I also want to thank the search committee, chaired by Deb Crawford, for their time and dedication to the search process.
Please join me in congratulating Matthew.
John Zomchick
Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor