Lance Collins (engineer)

Lance Collins is an engineer and professor for mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University. He is the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at the Cornell University College of Engineering and will become the inaugural vice president and executive director of the new Virginia Tech Innovation Campus.

Lance R. Collins
EducationPrinceton University
University of Pennsylvania
AwardsFellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2014)

Fellow of the American Physical Society (2007)

Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (2005)
Scientific career
FieldsMechanical engineering
Chemical engineering
InstitutionsCornell University
Pennsylvania State University

Education

As a rising high-school senior (from Westbury, New York) in 1976, Collins participated in the Minority Introduction to Engineering (MITE) Program at Lafayette College, where he discovered his interest in engineering.[1] Collins was accepted at Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Collins graduated with a BSE in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1981 and earned a MS in 1983 and a PhD in 1987 in chemical engineering, both from the University of Pennsylvania.[2][3] Collins was the second African-American to graduate in chemical engineering from Princeton University (one year after Cato T. Laurencin)[4] and the first African-American to receive a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.[5] As a graduate student, Collins earned a Cooperative Research Fellowship at Bell Laboratories.[1]

Career

In 1989, Collins was a postdoctoral scholar at Los Alamos National Laboratory,[6] where he worked with Francis H. Harlow.[1]

Collins served as professor of chemical engineering at Pennsylvania State University for 11 years.[2][3] In 1998, he was a visiting scientist at the Laboratoire de Combustion et Systemes Reactifs in Orléans, France and at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Collins joined Cornell University as a faculty member in 2002.[7] Collins became the first African American director of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and later the first African American dean at Cornell University.[8]

After serving as S. C. Thomas Sze Director of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Collins became Dean of Engineering at Cornell University in 2010.[2][3] As dean, Collins nearly doubled the proportion of underrepresented minority students (to 21%), while undergraduate female enrollment grew to 50%.[5] He also took on a central role in establishing of Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island in Manhattan, New York City in 2011.[9][10] During Collins' tenure as dean, the college of engineering secured the two largest gifts in its history: a $50 million gift to name the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering and a $50 million gift to name the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.[11]

After two terms as Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at Cornell,[7] Collins will join Virginia Tech as the inaugural vice president and executive director of the new Innovation Campus in Alexandria, Virginia on August 1, 2020.[12][13]

Together with Gilda Barabino, Collins founded the Minority Faculty Forum in 1995.[4] In 2006, they co-organized the Minority Faculty Development Workshop.[14]

Collins served as chair of the U.S. National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (USNC/TAM) in 2010–2012.[15]

Collins was elected Member-at-Large of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Engineering Section in 2014.[16] Until May 2020, he served on the Alan T. Waterman Award Committee for the National Science Foundation.[17]

Collins has been a member of the board of trustees of the Mitre Corporation since 2018.[18][19] He is currently a member of the Leadership Advisory Board of the University of Michigan College of Engineering.[20]

Research

Collins conducts research on turbulent processes with numerical simulations, for example in flames.[21] He studies turbulent coagulation of aerosol particles, the turbulent breakup of microstructures such as in droplets or red blood cells, and drag reduction due to polymer additives. Collins is also developing new models to describe such microturbulence processes.[22]

Honors
gollark: Also reliability, since wireless stuff is often... well, not reliable.
gollark: That's no reason to make it worse.
gollark: Also, latency.
gollark: You overestimate 802.11g.
gollark: I would like to state in advance that I am a fish.

References
  1. US Black Engineer & IT. 2011. p. 14-15. Retrieved 2020-06-13.
  2. "Lance Collins Will Be the Inaugural Director of Virginia Tech's Innovation Campus". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. March 23, 2020. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  3. "Lance Collins named dean of College of Engineering". Cornell Chronicle. May 20, 2010. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  4. "Interview with Lance Collins" (PDF). AIChE Minority Affairs Committee. August 21, 2015. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  5. "Collins receives award for 'cultivating new generation of scholars'". Cornell Chronicle. September 19, 2018. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  6. "Breaking rules to see things differently". Cornell University, College of Engineering. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  7. "Engineering Dean Lance Collins departing for Virginia Tech". Cornell Chronicle. February 3, 2020. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  8. "Q&A with Dean Lance Collins". Cornell University, College of Engineering. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  9. "Departing Engineering Dean Talks Accomplishments, Discusses Succession". The Cornell Daily Sun. February 12, 2020. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  10. "Getting Technical". Cornell Alumni Magazine. June 2012. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  11. "Virginia Tech Selects Innovation Campus Vice President and Executive Director". Virginia Tech. February 3, 2020. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  12. "Lance Collins: A Track Record of Service, Engagement and Significant Fundraising". Virginia Tech. February 3, 2020. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  13. "Virginia Tech selects innovation campus vice president and executive director". WUSA (TV). February 3, 2020. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  14. "2006 Minority Faculty Development Workshop". National Science Foundation. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  15. Herakovich, Carl T. (2016). Mechanics IUTAM USNC/TAM - A History of People, Events, and Communities. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-32312-1. ISBN 978-3-319-32311-4.
  16. "AAAS news and notes". Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences. January 30, 2015. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  17. "Alan T. Waterman Award Committee". National Science Foundation. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  18. "Board of Trustees - The MITRE Corporation". Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  19. "Dr. Lance R. Collins - The MITRE Corporation". Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  20. "Leadership Advisory Board". University of Michigan College of Engineering. Retrieved 2020-06-13.
  21. "A Sheet of Flame". Penn State News. June 1, 1995. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  22. "Lance R. Collins - Michigan Engineering Leadership Advisory Board". University of Michigan College of Engineering. Retrieved 2020-06-13.
  23. "Directory of Science & Engineering Faculty - Lance Collins". Retrieved 2020-06-13.
  24. "Prof Lance R Collins". Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  25. "Alan T. Waterman Award Committee Biographies - Lance Collins". Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  26. "APS Fellow Archive". Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  27. "Seven on Cornell faculty named AAAS fellows". Cornell Chronicle. December 3, 2014. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  28. "Minority Affairs Committee's William W. Grimes Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering". Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  29. "The MAC @ 25 archive is live". Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  30. "Lance Collins receives inaugural Mosaic Medal of Distinction". Cornell Chronicle. November 29, 2017. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
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