Dr. Vishwanath (Vish) Prasad
Awarded 2006 LACCEI Academic Merit Medal
Dr. Vishwanath (Vish) Prasad is the Executive Dean of the College of Engineering and Computing at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He also holds the title of Distinguished Professor of Engineering.
Since he joined FIU in 2001, Dr. Prasad’s leadership has resulted in significant progress for all areas of the College. Among his accomplishments are the creation of several new bachelors, masters and doctoral degree programs, bringing the total to over 30; the addition of world-class faculty; the development of new research centers and institutes including the Motorola Nanofabrication Research Facility, the IBM Latin American Grid System, the Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center, the Telecommunications Institute, the Advanced Materials Engineering Research Institute, and the Center for Diversity in Engineering; and an increase in the enrollment of undergraduate and graduate students. The increase is especially evident at the Ph.D. level where enrollment has grown by over 300%. Research funding for the College has almost doubled during Dr. Prasad’s deanship and through his efforts over $13 million has been raised for endowment and development funds.
Before moving to FIU, Dr. Prasad served as a Leading Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He also served as the Director of the (MURI) Center for Crystal Growth Research, a consortium of six universities, industry and national laboratories, and as the Associate Dean of Engineering for Research and Graduate Studies. From 1984 to 1993, Dr. Prasad served as a faculty member at Columbia University.
At Stony Brook, Dr. Prasad was a co-principal investigator of the National Science Foundation (MRSEC) Center for Thermal Spray Research. He is an elected Fellow of ASME and has served as a member of the USRA Microgravity Research Council for NASA Programs in Fluid Physics, Combustion and Materials as well as the Chair of the ASME Heat Transfer Division Committee on Transport Phenomena in Manufacturing and Materials Processing.
Dr. Prasad has written close to two hundred refereed articles on various topics in the areas of heat transfer, materials processing, microelectronics and plasma spray coating. He has organized numerous conferences, symposia and workshops, and has been invited to present special lectures at many academic institutions and industry in the United States and abroad. Dr. Prasad serves as the lead editor of the Annual Review of Heat Transfer and on the editorial advisory boards of two journals. In addition, he has edited or co-edited several journal volumes, books and symposium volumes. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in 1983 and M. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
Under Dr. Prasad’s leadership, the College of Engineering and Computing at FIU has developed partnerships with many engineering schools in Latin America and the Caribbean, including dual-degree programs, student exchange, faculty development and research collaboration. When Dr. Prasad started to interact with Latin American and Caribbean engineering institutions, he immediately saw a need for a forum in which these institutions could cooperate with each other. His idea led to the creation of the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI) in 2003 and he served as its founding President. LACCEI supports the achievement of excellence in engineering education and research in Latin American and Caribbean countries.
For his contributions to engineering education in Latin America and the Caribbean, Dr. Prasad has been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by Santa Maria University in Caracas, Venezuela, and he has been named Honorary Professor at Universidad Ricardo Palma in Lima, Peru. He has traveled extensively, visiting institutions in almost every major country in Latin America and the Caribbean.
