McMaster selects new Provost and Vice-President Academic

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/new-provost.jpg” caption=”Dr. Busch-Vishniac is McMaster’s new Provost and Vice-President Academic.”]Ilene Busch-Vishniac has been selected as the University's new Provost and Vice-President Academic, McMaster University President Peter George announced today.

Dr. Busch-Vishniac is currently a professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where from 1998-2003 she served as dean of the Whiting School of Engineering.

“I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Busch-Vishniac to this very important role,” George said. “In our international search, we discovered a respected and dynamic leader who not only brings to McMaster an extensive range of academic, administrative and research experience, but also a progressive approach that will continue to advance us nationally and internationally.”

After receiving undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Rochester, and masters and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, Busch-Vishniac worked at Bell Laboratories in the Acoustics Research Department. She joined the mechanical engineering faculty of the University of Texas in 1981 and she remained there until 1998, when she joined Johns Hopkins University as professor and dean.

“I am honoured to be invited to be part of the McMaster community,” said Busch-Vishniac. “McMaster is an extraordinary institution. Other universities talk about a commitment to both education and research but people at McMaster understand the importance of connecting the two, for the benefit of students and faculty.”

Although her appointment doesn't begin until August 1, Busch-Vishniac says she has already identified her early key goals: to get to know the University, its faculty, staff and students and to make progress in implementing McMaster's strategic plan, Refining Directions.

“I like the strategic goals set out in Refining Directions,” she says. “I'm looking forward to finding ways to work together to relate research to education for students, to continue to build exemplary research in areas of critical importance, to strengthen respect for diversity, and to broaden the University's positive impact on Hamilton, Canada and the world.”

Busch-Vishniac has received many teaching and research awards, including the Achievement Award of the Society of Women Engineers, the Curtis McGraw Research Award of the American Society for Engineering Education and the Silver Medal in Engineering Acoustics of the Acoustical Society of America.

She has served in various professional organizations, including a term as president of the Acoustical Society of America, and a term on the Engineering Deans Council of the American Society of Engineering Education. She has authored 60 technical articles and one book, and holds nine US patents on electromechanical sensors.

Busch-Vishniac's research work has focused on noise control and on transduction. Her noise control work includes designs of highway noise barriers to improve sound reduction and, more recently, extensive work to characterize and control noise in hospitals. She has also done research on how best to educate people in engineering.

Dr. Busch-Vishniac will be joined at McMaster by her husband, Ethan Vishniac, a highly respected astrophysicist who specializes in shock waves, cosmology and magnetic fields, specifically the ways in which they affect the formation of stars, black holes and other matter. He will join McMaster's Department of Physics and Astronomy and will establish the editorial offices of the Astrophysical Journal at McMaster. Currently, he is the editor-in-chief of the publication which is the leading international journal in astrophysics.