The engineering school at the University of California, Irvine, on Thursday named a new dean to replace Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos, who said he’s retiring from the post and taking a job at Irvine’s Broadcom Corp.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology veteran Rafael L. Bras is set to take the post Sept. 1 at UC Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering.
Bras, 57, is an expert on water and the environment. He’s pioneered a handful of water cycle models that are widely used in the studies of geology and hydrology.
He is set to replace longtime dean Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science who has been dean of the engineering school since 1997.
Alexopoulos is set to take a vice president position at Broadcom beginning in August.
Under his tenure, the engineering school doubled the number of students it enrolled there, attracted top faculty and landed a handful of high-profile donations.
Most notably, Broadcom cofounder and Chief Technology Officer Henry Samueli and his wife Susan gave $20 million to the school, which later took his moniker.
Alexopoulos also helped create various specialty research programs within the school, including the National Fuel Cell Research Center, the Integrated Nanosystems Research Facility, the Center for Pervasive Communications and Computing, and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. He also helped launch a biomedical engineering department.
Bras is currently the Edward A. Abdun-Nur Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. He also holds an appointment in the university’s department of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences.
A native of Puerto Rico, Bras holds three degrees from MIT. He started as a professor at the University of Puerto Rico before joining the MIT faculty in 1976.
He will be joined on campus by his wife, Patricia A. Bras, a landscape designer. They have two grown children.
