My name is Darryll Pines, and I am honored to report to you, as the new dean of the A. James Clark School of Engineering, about the school’s recent Significant Accomplishments.
For those of you who do not yet know me, I am a competitor. When colleagues here and elsewhere achieve at a high level, my response is typically, “I think we can do even better.” I am also a team player. I believe we must each compete individually to be the best, but also find ways to contribute to the larger organization so that it, too, can rise to the top. As you will see in this report, the Clark School is already ahead of me on both counts.
Second to None
 If you want proof that competition is a powerful spur to performance, just ask our
winning students. In the 11th annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition, our
Robotics@Maryland team took first against 25 other groups from leading U.S., Indian, Japanese, and
Canadian schools. Our Terps Racing team placed first out of 83 teams from all over the world
in the Formula SAE West race car competition. We won again in the undergraduate division of NASA’s Revolutionary
Advanced Systems Concepts—Academic Liaison Student Design Competition with our lunar rover. Most satisfyingly,
we returned to first place in the annual American Helicopter Society design competition, which we have now
won in nine of the past ten years against excellent U.S. schools.
Global Innovation and Impact
 You’ll also find top competitors among our faculty, alumni, and associates. TRX Systems,
an Mtech incubator company founded by Gil Blankenship (professor and associate chair of electrical
and computer engineering) and run by Carole Teolis
(Ph.D. ’94, electrical engineering), won first place in the 3rd
annual Global Security Challenge with its 3D in-building personnel tracking system for first responders. The
competition, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, the DoD’s Technical Support Working Group, and
others, selects the world’s most promising security start-up. Another winner: this year’s inductee to the Clark
School’s Innovation Hall of Fame was Alex Severinsky, for the design of the electric/gasoline
hybrid engine used in Toyota automobiles; Alex’s company was also an Mtech incubator “graduate.”
A Growing Team
 This year we have been fortunate to attract the following new faculty members;
their Ph.D. institutions and research areas are shown in parentheses: Silvia Muro
(Autonomous University of Madrid, nanoscale drug delivery; pictured right), Ian White (Stanford University,
molecular-level biosensors), Qingbin Cui (Purdue University, project delivery and finance),
and Lei Zhang (University of Minnesota, dynamics of transportation and urban systems).
I know you’ll join me in welcoming these excellent new Clark School engineers.
Leading the University
 We continue to lead all University of Maryland schools in the Great Expectations
campaign, having secured, as of November 30, 2008, $137.4 million of our $185 million goal—the largest amount
(by far) of any UM unit. Recent generous contributors include Harry K. Wells, the estate of Virginia H.
Murray, Dell, Inc., the Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Honda R&D Americas, Inc., Essex
Corporation, LG Chemical Company, Ltd., Harris Corporation, Toshiba Corporation, Washington Hospital Center,
Tow H. Moy, and James and Linda Bodycomb. I call on you to come forward as these people and
organizations have, to help us develop the resources we need to continue our rapid progress. Please
contact Leslie Borak, our new Assistant Dean
for External Relations, for assistance.
Join Us
In the coming weeks we will be completing our next
five-year strategic plan, which will guide our research, education, entrepreneurship, and service missions.
We will make the draft plan available on our web site so that interested people can recommend the best ways
to implement the plan’s proposals. Please join in this effort—it’s a very direct way to become part of our team.
I look forward to reporting to you in the future concerning the plan and our next array of competitive
successes.
Darryll Pines
Nariman Farvardin Professor and Dean
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