BCoE names new director of CAVS
April 9, 2009
STARKVILLE, Miss. –A veteran academic administrator and a Giles Distinguished professor is named director of the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS). Dr. Roger King, former associate dean of research and graduate studies for the Bagley College of Engineering (BCoE), was appointed to the position based on his successful track record of establishing the engineering college as one of the leading research institutions in the nation. Thanks to King’s leadership and direction, MSU ranks in the top 10 percent nationally in engineering research expenditures from more than 350 engineering schools; a ranking that is above most other SEC schools.
Under King’s tenure the college established the Engineering Engagement and Outreach Service. In cooperation with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership of Mississippi (MEP.ms), collectively the two entities generated more than an $800 million dollar impact for the state and created 280 jobs. King’s belief in being actively involved in outreach and economic development helped many Mississippi industries find ways to produce world-class goods in a more efficient and globally competitive way.
To help the state provide a highly trained workforce to existing and new companies relocating to Mississippi, King developed the BCoE distance education program. Designed primarily for working professional engineers unable to take traditional courses, the engineering college offers an interdisciplinary master of engineering degree through distance learning. The program also provides a flexible, graduate educational experience for employees of companies located throughout the Southeastern United States.
Through King’s academic leadership and educational vision he was instrumental in establishing the “Gateway to the West,” a partnership with San Jose State University that allows engineers in California to earn a doctoral degree from MSU without leaving their familiar San Jose campus or their highly coveted jobs in Silicon Valley. San Jose State has 2,000 master’s students, most of whom are working professionals, who can now simultaneously work in their profession and earn a world-class education from the Bagley College of Engineering.
Successful at solving regional and national educational issues, King worked on the international level helping students realize engineering’s global impact. He established an educational partnership between Mississippi State and Cardiff University, to share best practices and outcomes for generating research and economic development projects. Cardiff honored King with the highest award bestowed by the institution, Honorary Professor, for his efforts in ensuring that Cardiff students learn from scholars, scientists and practitioners working at the leading edge of their discipline.
Before being named director, King served as the interim director of CAVS from July 2008. Since then the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems has undergone a major transformation with the Computational Simulation and Design Center (SimCenter). Both entities merged under the common name of CAVS. The organizational transformation represented a growth opportunity for both centers that had a common theme of high performance computing, but was in many ways competing for the same resources.
Under Dr. King’s leadership CAVS has expanded its mission from a sole focus on ground vehicles to the broader definition of a vehicle as any means in or by which someone travels or something is carried or conveyed. This broader definition of vehicles gave the center a larger mission to better incorporate the expertise of the SimCenter faculty . It was also recognition that the new center had the expertise to address vehicles moving through any state of matter – gas, solid, or liquid. In addition, it opened new research areas, such as solid and liquid interface interactions and the use of unstructured grid technology in the computational structural mechanics area.
Today, the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS) is an interdisciplinary center comprised of engineering, research, development, and technology transfer teams focused on enhancing human and payload mobility. Its research activities are clustered around material science, manufacturing process modeling, computational mechanics, computational fluid dynamics, multi-scale modeling, vehicular systems engineering, design optimization, human factors and ergonomics, propulsion systems, information systems technology, and intelligent electronic systems.
The goal of CAVS is to become the nation’s premier interdisciplinary vehicular high-performance computing research facility.