Vijayakumar Bhagavatula Named Interim Dean of the College of Engineering

Carnegie Mellon University has named Vijayakumar (Kumar) Bhagavatula, the U.A. and Helen Whitaker Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Interim Dean of the College of Engineering. He will assume the duties of Interim Dean on June 6, 2025.

The announcement was made by CMU Provost and Chief Academic Officer Jim Garrett in January 2025.

“Kumar will ensure leadership continuity as we launch and conduct a search for the next Dean,” said Garrett in an email to the CMU community. 

Bhagavatula has extensive leadership background having served as Director of CMU-Africa from January 2018 - December 2021, Interim Vice Provost for Research at Carnegie Mellon University from April 2017 - December 2017, and Associate Dean for the College of Engineering from September 2010 - March 2017. Under his leadership of CMU-Africa, Bhagavatula left a legacy of high-growth and strategic program development to expand CMU-Africa’s impact on the continent through education and research.

Bhagavatula’s research interests include computer vision and machine learning. His publications include the book Correlation Pattern Recognition, twenty-two book chapters, more than 410 conference papers, and 210 journal papers. He is also the co-inventor of 12 patents. In recognition of his research contributions, he has been elected to the rank of Fellow in six professional societies (IEEE, Optica, SPIE, IAPR, AAAS and NAI).

Bhagavatula started his career in the electrical and computer engineering department in 1982. He received B.Tech. and M. Tech. degrees in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1975 and 1977, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1980.