Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff,

I am pleased to announce that I have appointed Mahesh Krishnamurthy, professor of electrical and computer engineering, as the new academic director of the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship at Illinois Institute of Technology, reporting directly to the provost.

Mahesh has been an Illinois Tech faculty member for more than 12 years and has been a passionate and effective advocate for students and the role of experiential project-based learning in both intellectual discovery and professionalizing our students. Having won several awards for teaching excellence at Illinois Tech, Mahesh has constantly sought to inspire students to innovate both in and out of the classroom. He has served as an IPRO instructor of record each spring for more than 10 years and has served as the faculty adviser for IIT Motorsports and the NASA Robotic Mining Competition teams, where his students have won numerous awards at the national and international levels. I am confident that his experience in working with these amazing students will continue to inspire innovation and leadership as he seeks to serve a much broader audience as academic director for the Kaplan Institute.

“I am thrilled to have Mahesh join the Kaplan Institute and lead its academic programming,” says Maryam Saleh, executive director of the Kaplan Institute. “Through his leadership, I am confident he will find creative and meaningful ways to engage faculty across the university in all of our initiatives, for the benefit of both their research and Illinois Tech students.”

Mahesh is also a very accomplished researcher and innovator in his own right, and serves in several leadership roles including as editor-in-chief of the publication IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification. Over the past decade he has developed strong working relationships with several companies that have led to several funded projects, publications, and patents. More significantly, these partnerships have served as the training ground for numerous talented undergraduate and graduate students, who have gone on to join major companies and successful startups. I look forward to supporting him in his new role at the Kaplan Institute, where he will work to bring world-class education and coaching in entrepreneurship and innovation to all Illinois Tech students, to engender the active participation of our faculty in Kaplan Institute programs and IPRO, and to strengthen our ties with industry, fostering a culture of co-innovation and renewing our passion for entrepreneurship.

I have no doubt that his energy, enthusiasm, creativity, and ability to implement ideas and plans make him a valued partner to me and within our university community. Please join me in welcoming Mahesh in his new role at Illinois Tech.

Sincerely,

Peter Kilpatrick
Provost, Illinois Institute of Technology