Announcing the New Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Dear Members of the Georgetown University Community:

I wish to share, with great pleasure, the appointment of Norberto M. Grzywacz, Ph.D., as Dean of Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Grzywacz’s extensive research combines multiple disciplines, including neuroscience, physics, cognitive science, cellular biology, biomedical engineering, and mathematical and computational modeling. He joins our community from University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, where he serves as Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Dwight C. and Hildagarde E. Baum Chair. Dr. Grzywacz comes to Georgetown following a distinguished career as a researcher and academic administrator.

Dr. Grzywacz served as Director of the Neuroscience Graduate Program at USC from 2005-2010 following a research career that brought him to both the Center for Biological Information Processing at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco. In September of 2001, he joined the faculty of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering. Dr. Grzywacz has served as chair of the BME department since 2010.

He received his Bachelors degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1980. In 1984, he received his Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the same institution. He will begin his role as Dean on January 1, 2015.

Spanning more than 50 different departments, the Graduate School offers diverse courses of study, including innovative dual programs that enable students to explore the frontiers of disciplines. As dean of the Graduate School, Dr. Grzywacz will oversee its many programs and collaborations and will also lead University initiatives to build new interdisciplinary graduate programs. He will work side by side with faculty members who see opportunities in combining efforts of multiple units, nurture interdisciplinary curricular developments, and support the larger University efforts at joint appointments of faculty across units.

I can only begin to express my gratitude to our colleague, G. William Rebeck, Ph.D., for his service as Interim Dean. When his term as Interim Dean finishes at the end of the 2014 calendar year, we look forward to Dr. Rebeck’s return to the faculty as Professor of Neuroscience.

I also wish to express my appreciation to the search committee, led by John McNeill, Ph.D., University Professor, which conducted a nation-wide search for the Graduate School’s next leader.

I hope that you will all join me in offering a warm welcome to Dr. Grzywacz; I look forward to introducing him to our community in person next year. You all have my very best wishes for a terrific summer.

Sincerely,

John J. DeGioia