|
Professor Elisabeth Smela has been selected by the University System of Maryland to receive a Wilson H. Elkins Professorship starting in Fiscal Year 2025-26. The two-year professorship comes with $80.000 to support initiatives she is leading to advance sustainability education.
A pioneer in the integration of accessible, discipline-relevant sustainability content into the engineering curriculum, she aims to scale up this effort to reach the full range of disciplinary contexts represented at UMD, through a combination of educational scholarship, AI innovation, and educational community engagement.
In collaboration with the UMD Teaching and Learning Transformation Center and the Office of Sustainability, Smela has been heading development of a certificate program focused on helping instructors better integrate sustainability into their courses. She will next develop a database of sustainability-related assignments for students across a variety of disciplines and fields, curated and recommended by an AI concierge.
A UMD faculty member since 2000, Smela has previously served the Clark School as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Graduate Programs, Equity Administrator and Diversity Officer, and ADVANCE Professor. She served the U.S. Government as a Jefferson Science Fellow, advancing smart cities in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states.
Her current research interests are in cell-based sensing, focusing on the development of an e-nose. She has done research on stretchable tactile sensors for robots, polymer actuators, polymer MEMS, and the integration of organic materials with solid state devices. Smela is the recipient of both a Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering (PECASE) and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
The Elkins professorship was established in 1978 as the first permanently endowed, university-wide professorship at the University of Maryland. It was extended to the entire University System of Maryland (USM) in 1988. It is named for former University of Maryland President Wilson H. Elkins, who served from 1954 to 1978.
UMD mechanical engineering faculty who have previously received the Elkins Professorship include Miao Yu, Don DeVoe, and Jim Duncan.
October 29, 2025
|
