Maggelakis named Dean of the College of Science

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A. Sue Weisler

Sophia Maggelakis

Sophia Maggelakis has been named Dean of the College of Science, effective immediately, announced Jeremy Haefner, RIT Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. Maggelakis had served as interim dean since last May.

“The commitments to shared governance and collaboration that Dr. Maggelakis embodies stood out to me as strong assets to the dean’s role, particularly in the next few years as we undergo calendar conversion,” Haefner says. “Her enthusiasm to appropriately grow research across the college, to contribute to the young alliance with Rochester General Health System, and to continue her strong support of undergraduate education were also important to my decision.”

Adds Maggelakis: “It is an honor to serve as the next Dean of the College of Science. My passion for excellence, respect for others, loyalty and dedication will be my guiding principles as we move forward. I am excited about working closely with our faculty, staff and students to promote quality teaching, grow our research and scholarship activities, establish strong collaborations within and outside RIT, and bring recognition to our college for its world-class teaching and research.”

Maggelakis joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in 1990. She served as director of the program before being named head of the School Mathematical Sciences, which she formed in 2006. The school houses undergraduate programs in Applied Mathematics, Computational Mathematics, and Applied Statistics, a graduate program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, two research centers—the Center for Applied and Computational Mathematics and the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation—and the Summer Math Institute.

She is a past recipient of the Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching and is an active mentor for the Women in Science, Engineering and Mathematics Group of Rochester. Maggelakis led and implemented a program that revamped the science and engineering calculus curriculum and significantly reduced student failure rates. She also sat on the Math A Regents Review Panel in 2003.

Maggelakis holds a doctoral degree in Computational and Applied Mathematics from Old Dominion University. She focuses her research in the area of mathematical biology, in particular the mathematical modeling of biological processes, such as tumor growth, capillary growth, wound healing and retinopathy. She has published two book chapters, many refereed journal articles and presented numerous papers at national and international conferences.