Dean Darryll Pines Leads the Clark School To Make A Difference
Darryll Pines, the new dean of theA.James Clark School of Engineering,is both a fierce individual competitor and a dedicated team player. Balancing
those two characteristics has brought him, and the organizations he has served and led, great success. He is now working to create such a balance at the Clark School.
“Many of us at the Clark School are driven to excel, to achieve at a higher level than our colleagues here and elsewhere,” he explains. “And we succeed. Our students, faculty and alumni are well known and successful competitors for national and international awards and positions of leadership, as this magazine shows.We will always continue to do so. But we must balance our individual pursuits with contributions to the greater good—to our units and our school—
so that these, too, can rise to the top.”
Pines sees achieving this balance as a goal for everyone, from students, faculty and staff to alumni and corporate partners.
“An important part of my job is to inspire everyone associated with the school to do one thing, every day, for the greater good. It might be offering to assist a colleague in another department; or taking a moment, in a presentation about your own research, to talk about someone else’s exciting advance. It might mean working on a strategic plan committee or as a mentor to a student group. Or taking time to serve at a government agency.
These efforts will make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. That’s how we will complete our ascent into the top ranks of the nation’s engineering schools, and ensure that we contribute, at
our full capacity, to progress in the world.” |
“I hope to convince our faculty members that such experiences at government labs—and in College Park we are close to so many of them—not only allow us to serve our nation, but also give us a
Change Means Opportunity
Contributing to progress is a primary objective. Pines wants to focus the school’s immense expertise and energies on a small number of major opportunities that he believes hold the greatest chances for the school to make significant contributions.
“This is a time of great change, and that means opportunity,” he states. “The Clark School has four capabilities: engineering research, education, entrepreneurship and service. We need to focus those capabilities on specific areas—our faculty cite healthcare, water management, sustainable energy,
telecommunications and national security as major impact opportunities for us, with nanotechnology as a special expertise. By doing so we can create powerful new technologies, bright young engineers to apply those technologies in their own start-up companies, and service programs through which our students can take our ideas and skills to people around the state, the country and the world. Our sphere of impact can and must be that big.”
Many Ways to Make an Impact
From 2003 to 2006, during a leave of absence from the university, Pines served as a program manager for the Tactical Technology Office and Defense Sciences
Office of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).
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At DARPA, he initiated five new programs primarily related to the development of aerospace
technologies, for which he received a Distinguished Service Medal.
“I hope to convince our faculty members that such experiences at government labs—and in College Park we are close to so many of them—not only allow us to serve our nation, but also give us a better understanding of funding organizations and the proposal process that will yield us more and better grants over time,” Pines explains. He also held positions at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Chevron Corporation, and Space Tethers, Inc.
At LLNL, Pines worked on the Clementine Spacecraft program, which discovered water near the south pole of the moon. A replica is in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.
Pines also foresees great opportunities in extending the Clark School beyond College Park. He points to the school’s recently announced partnership with the
College of Southern Maryland, the Southern Maryland Higher Education Center and the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division as a prime example. This
partnership will explore joint education and research efforts and establish four-year aerospace and mechanical engineering bachelor’s programs in southern Maryland, close to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station. As these degrees are not available in the region, the partnership could open new employment opportunities and improve the area’s economy.
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A Stellar Academic Portfolio
Pines credits his parents for his own success and that of his identical twin brother, an electrical engineer. “My parents did not pursue higher education, but my father was one of the smartest people I have ever known. He had an incredible memory and a creative way of thinking about things,” Pines says. “The home environment my parents created and the commitment they made to their children are inspiring.”
Their commitment stands behind Pines’s stellar resumé. He earned a Ph.D. in 1992 and an M.S. in 1988 in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1986, he received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He came to Maryland in 1995 as an assistant professor in the Clark School and has served as chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering since 2006 (after his work at DARPA).
Under his leadership, the Clark School’s aerospace engineering department was recently ranked ninth overall among U.S. universities, up from 11th last year, and fifth among public schools in the U.S. News & World Report graduate school rankings. During his tenure as chair, the department ranked in the top five in AviationWeek and Space Technology’s Aerospace and Defense Workforce Study.
Pines has directed the Sloan |
Scholars Program for minority doctoral students since 1996, and the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in
Engineering and Science, Inc., which provides corporate scholarships to minority students pursuing graduate degrees, since 1999. He has also served as chair of the Engineering Council, director of the NASA Constellation University Institutes Project and director of the SAMPEX (Solar, Autonomous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer) flight experiment. Last year, he was a member of the University of Maryland’s strategic planning steering committee.
Finding Time for Research, Teaching and Meeting Alumni
Pines’s current research focuses on structural dynamics, including structural health monitoring and prognosis, smart sensors, and adaptive, morphing and biologically-inspired structures, as well as |
the guidance, navigation and control of aerospace vehicles. He is a fellow of the Institute of Physics and an
associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and he has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
He still hopes to teach at least one course each semester. “Teaching keeps me fresh, honest and an integral part of our educational mission,” he says.
This spring he is taking time to travel the country, visit with alumni, share his vision for the Clark School and invite them to get involved. “I will depend on our alums to provide guidance, judgment, useful connections in business and government, volunteer work as mentors, and sponsorship of internships and other opportunities for our students. Their commitment is critical to our future success, and I believe our alums understand this and will join in.”
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