Pitt names 1st woman as engineering dean

Michele V. Manuel, a leading materials engineer in Florida, is the University of Pittsburgh’s new dean of engineering, a discipline dominated by males nationally that has sought to identify talented women and minorities.

Her appointment as U.S. Steel Dean of the Swanson School of Engineering is effective Sept. 1, officials announced Wednesday.

She is the first woman to hold the deanship since the school’s founding in 1846.

Manuel comes to Pitt from the University of Florida, where she has been chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Nuclear Engineering program since 2017, Pitt officials said.

During those years, she established new positions and programs, leading the recruitment of 20 faculty members. She oversaw growth of the department into one of the largest and most diverse of its kind in the U.S., Pitt officials said in announcing the appointment.

“Michele is a transformational and award-winning scholar and educator,” Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor Joseph McCarthy said in a statement. “Michele’s outstanding higher education and industry experience uniquely position her to lead the Swanson School forward.”

Manuel’s scholarship extends outside academia to multiple industry partnerships and leading a medical device company, Element12 Biotechnologies LLC, officials said.

She has secured scholarly memberships and awards.

Manuel received a doctoral degree in materials science and engineering from Northwestern University in 2007 and earlier, a bachelor’s degree in the same academic area from the University of Florida, according to her faculty page there.

Before returning to Florida, she was a postdoctoral researcher at General Motors in Warren, Michigan.

Interim Dean Sanjeev Shroff, who lead the Swanson School for two years, will become a assistant to the provost and senior vice chancellor for health sciences.