Meet Bill Sanders – RIT’s next President
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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:
- Introducing first-of-their-kind Master of Science degrees in AI Engineering.
- Creating a new undergraduate additional major in Engineering Design, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship.
- Creating eight new transcriptable graduate certificates.
- Securing, in partnership with leaders across the university, a transformational partnership with the Mastercard Foundation that enabled CMU-Africa to double its enrollment to over 300 students from more than 20 African countries and establish both the Center for the Inclusive Digital Transformation of Africa and the Afretec Network.
- Establishing a new space—The Belonging Center—dedicated to hosting community-building activities and programming focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Launching a new Center for Faculty Success, which provides orientation, professional development, and resources to support faculty achievement.
- Establishing an Alumni Awards program to honor distinguished members of the College of Engineering community for their accomplishments, innovations, and advancements.
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:
- Founding director of the Discovery Partners Institute in the University of Illinois system, where he led the joint education, research, and innovation institute in its efforts to drive technology-based economic growth to revitalize the state and Chicago’s tech ecosystem. The initiative was backed by a $500 million appropriation from the state and more than $400 million in private funding.
- Founding director of the University of Illinois’ Information Trust Institute.
- Director of the Coordinated Science Laboratory.
- Head of the university's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
- Co-founder of the Advanced Digital Sciences Center in Singapore, which was Illinois’ first international research facility.
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.