Meet Bill Sanders – RIT’s next President

William Sanders headshot

Carnegie Mellon University leader brings innovative, global experiences to RIT

Distinguished researcher. Cybersecurity pioneer. Global innovator. Accomplished entrepreneur. Servant leader.

Sanders, with 37 years of experience in academia, is currently serving as the  Dr. William D. and Nancy W. Strecker Dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Sanders joined Carnegie Mellon in January 2020 and led the development of a new strategic plan to further position its renowned College of Engineering as a research powerhouse to address societal challenges with global reach. He credits his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon Engineering for the college’s success. Highlights of his tenure as dean include:

Prior to Carnegie Mellon, Sanders spent 25 years as a tenured professor and held the Herman M. Dieckamp Endowed Chair in Engineering at the University of Illinois.

Accomplishments at Illinois include being:

Sanders began his career as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Arizona in 1988. He earned his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering; master’s degree in computer, information, and control engineering; and doctoral degree in computer science and engineering, all from the University of Michigan.

Sanders’ research interests include secure, dependable, and resilient computing systems with a focus on critical infrastructures. He has directed work at the forefront of national efforts to make the U.S. power grid smart and resilient. His significant scholarly record includes publishing more than 300 technical papers in this field. He is also a co-developer of a tool for assessing the security of networked systems that is available commercially under the name NP-View from the startup company Network Perception, which he co-founded. Network Perception had a successful exit in 2024, being acquired by Dragos Inc.

A recognized leader in his field, Sanders was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2023, one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer, for his contributions to cybersecurity and resiliency technologies for critical infrastructures. Sanders is also an elected fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Among many honors, he was the 2016 recipient of the IEEE Technical Field Award, Innovation in Societal Infrastructure, for “assessment-driven design of trustworthy cyber infrastructures for societal-scale systems.”

Sanders, 63, is a native of Grand Rapids, Mich. He and his wife, Emily, have two grown children who are both engineers. When he is not working, Sanders enjoys the outdoors, hiking, kayaking, canoeing, and amateur astronomy.

He will become RIT’s 11th President on July 1, 2025.