Leadership Team

Under the supervision of the Dean, the leadership at Tufts School of Engineering consists of Associate Deans and Directors, representing their respective areas of responsibility within the schools. These leaders work together as a team to promote and advance best practices of academic administration within the school.

• Executive Associate Dean
• Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs
• Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education
• Associate Dean for Undergraduate Curriculum Development
• Associate Dean for Graduate Education
• Associate Dean for Research
• Dean of Undergraduate and Graduate Students
• Dean of Admissions and Enrollment Management
• Co-Director Center for Engineering Education and Outreach
• Director of Tufts Gordon Institute

John Barker, Dean of Undergraduate and Graduate Students
John Barker, Dean of Undergraduate and Graduate Students, has overall responsibility for enhancing the undergraduate and graduate student experience in the School of Arts and Sciences and strengthening the integration of university-wide undergraduate and graduate academic and co-curricular initiatives.

Prior to his arrival at Tufts in 2012, Dean Barker was assistant provost of undergraduate education at the University of Miami in Florida, with the scope of university-wide responsibilities in the areas of undergraduate research, diversity, academic counseling and advocacy, and academic achievement. He was also the founding director of the Office of Academic Enhancement. In addition, Dean Barker served as a faculty master for one of the University of Miami's residential colleges and as an adjunct faculty member in the university's Department of Educational and Psychological Studies, in Miami's School of Education. A graduate of the State University of New York Oswego where he majored in political science and history, Dean Barker holds a doctorate in higher education from the University of Rochester.

Lee Coffin, Dean of Admissions and Enrollment Management
Lee Coffin has served as Tufts' Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Enrollment Management since 2003. Prior to Tufts he was Dean of Admission at Connecticut College from 1995 to 2001, where he also held concurrent appointments as Vice President for Enrollment (1998 to 2001) and Acting Vice President for Public Affairs (2000-01). Dean Coffin held the Millet Chair in Admissions at Milton Academy from 2001-03 and also served administrative appointments in Advancement at Trinity College and freshman advising at Harvard College. In addition to his work in admissions, Dean Coffin also serves as an adjunct lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he teaches a seminar entitled "Principles and Policy Issues of College Admissions." He earned a B.A. with honors in history from Trinity College and an Ed.M. in administration, planning and social policy from Harvard University.

Margery Davies, Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs
Dr. Margery Davies is the Director of the Office of Diversity Education and Development (also known as the Diversity Office), which serves both the School of Engineering and the School of Arts and Sciences. This office is responsible for developing, implementing, and assessing a range of programs for faculty, staff, and students, and for collaborating with offices, departments, and programs in the School of Engineering, the School of Arts and Sciences, and other parts of the university, as appropriate, to promote diversity. Dr. Davies also serves as the Affirmative Action Officer for the School of Engineering and the School of Arts and Sciences, and in that capacity monitors all faculty searches and hires.

With a doctorate in sociology from Brandeis University, Dr. Davies has written about women, work, families, and child and family policy in the United States. Her book, Woman's Place Is at the Typewriter: Office Work and Office Workers, 1870-1930 (Temple University Press, 1982), is an analysis of the feminization of clerical work in the United States.

With Professor Francine Jacobs of Tufts University, she edited More Than Kissing Babies? Current Child and Family Policy in the United States, (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994).

Robert J. Hannemann, Director of Tufts Gordon Institute
Rob Hannemann is the Director of the Tufts Gordon Institute. In this role, he is responsible for the Engineering Management and Entrepreneurial Leadership programs, which serve more than 100 graduate students and 400 undergraduates annually. He is also Professor of the Practice in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Dr. Hannemann earned advanced degrees in mechanical engineering from New York University (M.S.'72) and MIT (Sc.D.'75) after receiving his B.S. degree from Illinois Institute of Technology. He has experience as an engineer, manager, and entrepreneur. Prior to joining Tufts he co-founded an energy-efficient electronics cooling firm, Thermal Form & Function, Inc., where he is a director and management and technology advisor. Prior to joining the Tufts School of Engineering, he was a senior executive at Corning, Inc., Lasertron, and Digital Equipment Corporation. Earlier in his career, he was on the faculty at the University of Maryland at College Park.

G. Kim Knox, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education
Kim Knox has served as the School of Engineering Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education since 1994. In this role, Dean Knox is directly responsible for developing, implementing and assessing academic advising and the administration of the degrees awarded in 13 engineering disciplines. She serves as the School of Engineering's point person on educational policy.

Dean Knox received her B.S. in Civil Engineering and her M.S. in structural engineering from Tufts and is a registered professional engineer. Prior to joining Tufts, she was the Chair of the Massachusetts Highway Department's Quality Leadership Council (1993-1994) which comprised the top decision makers for the Executive, Engineering Administration, and Finance branches. The Council provided policy level strategic vision and direction to the 3,000-person agency. She also served as a Senior Structural Engineer and Project Manager at Fay, Spofford and Thorndike (1980-1993). In this role, she was involved in design and investigation of more than 100 bridges including steel, prestressed concrete, masonry and multiple-span curved girder bridge structures.

Elena Naumova, Associate Dean for Research
Elena Naumova, Associate Dean for Research, is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, an adjunct professor at The Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutritional Science and Policy, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. The School of Engineering Office of Research is responsible for creating a supportive environment to enhance research productivity and active scholarship. It initiates, supports and sustains programs and activities to increase faculty participation in research with an emphasis on collaborative and interdisciplinary efforts. The Office of Research is also responsible for working with the remainder of the Dean's Office to effectively communicate both internally and externally the many advances made by faculty and students.

Professor Naumova received her doctorate at Novosibirsk State Technical University, Russia in 1988. Professor Naumova's area of expertise is in methodology development for modeling of transient processes with application in environmental epidemiology, infectious diseases, and public health. Her research on developing innovative analytical and computational tools for monitoring environmentally-driven infections and longitudinal studies of growth is funded by NIAID, NIEHS, and EPA. She is a Director of the Tufts Initiative for Forecasting and Modeling of Infectious Diseases (InForMID). She is a member of the American Public Health Association, The International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, The International Environmetrics Society, and the American Statistical Association

Chris Rogers, Co-Director Center for Engineering Education and Outreach
Chris Rogers is the co-director of the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) and a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The CEEO is a leading innovator in K-16 engineering education. Members of the CEEO believe all students are budding innovators who will excel by learning through failure, by working in teams, and by solving open-ended problems. Faculty from Tufts' Department of Education and multiple engineering departments work to change K-16 education through educational research, technology development, and outreach to students, educators, and engineering professionals. The CEEO’s technologies have been used in thousands of classrooms around the world and its outreach programs reach hundreds of teachers and students each year.

Professor Rogers received all his degrees at Stanford University where earned doctorate (1989) for his thesis looking at particle motion in a boundary layer flow. His research interests are mostly in the area of fluid turbulence, musical instrument design, and robotics. His work has been funded by numerous government organizations and corporations, including the NSF, NASA, Intel, Boeing, Cabot, Steinway, Selmer, National Instruments, Raytheon, Fulbright, and the LEGO Corporation.

Scott G. Sahagian, Executive Associate Dean
Scott Sahagian is the first Executive Associate Dean for the School of Engineering and has been involved in developing all aspects of the administrative infrastructure for the school, directly supervising the areas of finance, space, information technology, and personnel. Prior to joining the School of Engineering, he was the Chief Administrative Officer of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University from January 2002 until March of 2005. He began at Brandeis in 1995 as the Associate Director of the Schneider Institute for Health Policy where his responsibilities included the management of the university's largest research unit. He was the Administrative Officer at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology from 1991 to 1995. Dean Sahagian worked in numerous positions in the YMCA, serving as Executive Director in several communities before working in academia.

He currently serves on several community and religious boards including the Center for Long Term Health and Aging and the Armenian Church at Hye Pointe. He has several published articles in the area of customer service and management. Dean Sahagian holds a B.S. from Salem State College and a M.B.A with a concentration in finance from Suffolk University.

Chris Swan, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Curriculum Development
Chris Swan, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Curriculum Development, is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an adjunct associate professor at Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service. Dean Swan chairs the Curriculum Committee, which works with the school's Curriculum Task Force in guiding future curriculum revision and enhancement, consistent with school's aspirations to educate Tufts engineers as leaders and integrators in technological innovation. Professor Swan also moderates the school's Outcomes & Objectives Assessment Committee which works with the Tufts Office of Institutional Research to coordinate assessment measures in the School of Engineering and to improve our processes of assessment, feedback, and continuous improvements. He has also been an active member of the American Society for Engineering Education currently serving as program chair for the Community Engagement in Engineering Education constituent committee.

Dean Swan received his Doctor of Science (ScD) degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from MIT in 1994 and both Bachelor (BS) and Master (MS) of Science degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1984 and 1986, respectively. Prior to obtaining his ScD., Dean Swan worked for GZA Geoenvironmental, Inc., a national engineering consulting firm specializing in geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering projects.

Sameer Sonkusale, Associate Dean for Graduate Education
Sameer Sonkusale, Associate Dean for Graduate Education, is also an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. As Associate Dean for Graduate Education, he is responsible for the graduate programs in the School of Engineering and chairs the Engineering Graduate Studies Committee that sets policy, admission standards, and overall quality of graduate programs. The committee is also responsible for co-ordination among programs in school of engineering and with other departments in arts and sciences.

Dean Sonkusale received his doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. His teaching and research interests are in the area of nanoscale science and engineering, nanoscale sensors-on-a-chip and instrumentation-on-a-chip, low power integrated circuits, biomedical circuits and systems, and analog to information converters. A recent addition to this list is the area of metamaterials and plasmonics. His research is funded by NSF, ONR, DARPA and various foundations.

Sonkusale received the NSF CAREER award in 2010, the Future Trends in Microelectronics Best poster prize in 2009, and has won several best paper awards with his students at many international conferences (NANO 2008, SENSORS 2008, ISDRS 2009, FTM 2009). Dean Sonkusale is an associate editor of IEEE Transactions of Circuits and Systems-1. He also serves on Analog Signal Processing Technical Committee, Biomedical Circuits and Systems Technical Committee of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. He is a member of the IEEE and AAAS.