麻豆传媒

Nicholas Mastronarde has been named chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He assumes the role on Aug. 14.

Mastronarde succeeds Jonathan Bird, who has served as department chair since 2017. Bird will return to his faculty role.

“I’m excited for the future of the Department of Electrical Engineering under professor Mastronarde’s guidance,” says Dean Kemper Lewis. “He brings not only a deep dedication to excellence but also an inspiring vision for the department’s future. His leadership will spark innovation, strengthen our community and steer the department toward continued excellence.

“I thank Professor Bird for his exceptional leadership and commitment to the department and UB,” Lewis adds. “His guidance was instrumental in establishing the department as a national leader in electrical engineering.”

A UB faculty member since 2011, Mastronarde is currently associate professor and co-director of undergraduate studies in the department. His research focuses on next-generation wireless networks, drone networks and reinforcement learning.

He has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers, holds two patents and has led more than $5 million in sponsored research. He has received several awards, including the 2022 UB Teaching Innovation Award and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ 2020 Senior Teacher of the Year Award.

Mastronarde received a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Davis.

“In this new role, I aim to leverage the momentum of our department’s recent faculty hires and improved ranking to help my colleagues thrive and, together, further elevate our scholarly impact in research and teaching,” Mastronarde says.

Under Bird’s tenure as chair, the Department of Electrical Engineering has grown in reputation, size and impact through the recruitment of outstanding senior and early-career scholars. This has propelled the national ranking of the department to its highest level in history, with record sustained levels of research expenditures and high-impact funded programs.

Returning to a faculty role, Bird will continue his study of the electrical properties of emerging nanomaterials and nanodevices. He is also the inaugural director of UB’s Center for Advanced Semiconductor Technologies, which he helped establish in 2024 to meet the increasing need for next-generation semiconductors.