Vijay Kumar

Nemirovsky Family Dean, School of Engineering and Applied Science
Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Computer and Information Science, and Electrical and Systems Engineering

Vijay Kumar has been on the faculty at Penn since 1987, and began his term as Dean of Penn Engineering in 2015 after which he was reappointed for a second term in 2021. He holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University (1987) and a Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (1983).

Kumar’s research interests are in robotics, specifically multi-robot systems, and micro aerial vehicles. His lab’s work has led to many startups in robotics, and he is the founder of Exyn Technologies. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Boon Thau Loo

Senior Associate Dean for Education and Global Initiatives
RCA Professor, Computer and Information Science and Electrical and Systems Engineering

Boon Thau Loo leads the NetDB@Penn research group and is an active member of the Distributed Systems Lab and the Penn Database Group. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2009), AFOSR Young Investigator Award (2012), Penn’s Emerging Inventor of the Year Award (2018), Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching (2021), the University Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching (2022), and the International Student Advocate of the Year (ISAY) (2024) awarded by Penn ISSS. He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006, an M.S. from Stanford University in 2000, and a B.S. with highest honors from Berkeley in 1999. He was honored with the 2006 David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize for outstanding dissertation research in EECS at UC Berkeley and the 2007 ACM SIGMOD Dissertation Award.