UConn’s new president to speak at Sept. 24 breakfast

MIDDLETOWN — University of Connecticut President Thomas C. Katsouleas will serve as guest speaker at a Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce Member Breakfast Meeting on Sept. 24, Chamber Chairman Don DeVivo announced.

This event, sponsored by Pratt & Whitney, will be held at the Red Lion Hotel with networking beginning at 7 a.m., breakfast buffet at 7:15 a.m. and meeting program from 8 to 9 a.m.

“We look to welcoming President Thomas C. Katsouleas of the University of Connecticut,” Chamber President Larry McHugh said. “UConn continues to be a worldclass public university and we look forward to hearing his plans for the university. I would also like to thank Pratt & Whitney for sponsoring this event as they continue to help develop their workforce pipeline in the state.”

Cost is $22 for Chamber members and $32 for nonmembers.

Advance registration required, register online: www.middlesexchamber.com.

Katsouleas became the University of Connecticut’s 16th president on Aug. 1. Katsouleas most recently served as executive vice president and provost of the University of Virginia.

Katsouleas had been executive vice president and provost at Virginia since 2015, having been appointed to the position after serving for seven years at Duke University as the dean of the Pratt School of Engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Katsouleas earned his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in 1979 from UCLA, after transferring there from Santa Monica Community College, and stayed at UCLA to pursue and receive his Ph.D. in physics in 1984.

He was a researcher and faculty member at UCLA for seven years after receiving his Ph.D., before joining the University of Southern California faculty as an associate professor of electrical engineering in 1991, becoming a full professor in 1997. He also was an associate dean of USC’s engineering school and vice provost of information technology services.

Katsouleas is a leading scholar in the field of plasma science and has authored or coauthored more than 250 publications. He served a term as president of the Faculty and Academic Senate at USC during his time in its engineering school.

He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. While at Duke, he also created the Grand Challenge Scholars Program of the National Academy of Engineering, a program now emulated at more than 120 universities across the U.S. and in several countries around the world.

Among his many goals at UConn, Katsouleas expects to focus strongly on supporting innovation, enhancing the university’s connections with alumni and philanthropic supporters, and capitalizing on the state’s investments to aggressively expand UConn’s impact on the economy and innovation.

As the top academic officer at Virginia, Katsouleas led six undergraduate and six professional schools with enrollments of more than 16,000 undergraduates and more than 6,700 graduate students. In addition to focusing on the research and academic enterprises, he has a special interest in ensuring the quality of the student experience through ensuring diversity, shared values of respect and responsibility, and recruiting highly talented faculty whose backgrounds reflect those of the students they teach.

Katsouleas is also passionate about teaching and the value of designing courses in ways that help students learn in authentic, experiential ways that best prepare them for transitioning their knowledge later into successful careers.

In his spare time, Katsouleas enjoys sailing, swimming, surfing, water skiing and other water sports. He’s also been known at past universities to scoot across campus on his personalized skateboard, explore the surroundings by motorcycle, and is as comfortable discussing plasma physics as he is catching a wave.

Katsouleas