Steering Committee
Dennis Kekas
Associate Vice Chancellor, Partnerships and Economic Development
As associate vice chancellor, Dennis is responsible for Centennial Campus Partnerships and associated special projects. He also oversees the College of Engineering’s Institute for Next Generation IT Systems.
Previously in 2014, he was the Launch Director of NC State’s “Power America” National Manufacturing Innovation Institute focused on advanced power electronics. In 2017 he led NC State’s Smart Connected Cities Initiative in partnership with the City of Raleigh, N.C. and in 2018, played a key role in the announcement of IBM’s first Quantum Computing Hub, a partnership with NC State.
As a former IBM career executive, he led development of the first NYSE floor trading system as well as disruptive products associated with point-of-sale, optical scanners, keyboards and networking infrastructure.
His BSEE is from Clemson University with graduate studies at Syracuse, NC State and UCLA. A registered engineer in New York and North Carolina, he holds 8 patents with numerous awards for inventions, technical achievements and management excellence.
As past president of the Clemson Alumni Association he received Clemson’s Distinguished Service Award in 1999, and received the 2016 Association of University Research Parks Leadership Award.
In 2008 he co-founded ImagineOptix Corporation to commercialize NC State optical technologies and is board chair. He also serves on the board of the Clemson University Research Foundation.
Daniel Stancil
Alcoa Distinguished Professor and Head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Dr. Daniel Stancil is Alcoa Distinguished Professor and Head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at NC State.
Dr. Stancil has spent many years as a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at both Carnegie Mellon University and NC State. While at Carnegie Mellon, he served as Associate Head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering. He has been Department Head at NC State since 2009.
Dr. Stancil received engineering degrees from Tennessee Tech (B.S.E.E.) and MIT (S.M., E.E. and Ph.D.).
His research has included such varied topics as magnetic films, optics, microwaves, wireless channels, antennas, remote labs and particle physics. Technology for distributing wireless signals through HVAC ducts that Dr. Stancil and his students developed has been installed in such major buildings as Chicago’s Trump Towers and McCormick Place Convention Center. The demonstration of neutrino communications by a multidisciplinary team coordinated by Dr. Stancil was recognized by Physics World Magazine as one of the top 10 Physics Breakthroughs of 2012. Additional recognitions that his work has received have included an IR 100 Award and a Photonics Circle of Excellence Award.
Dr. Stancil is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a past-president of the IEEE Magnetics Society.
Mladen Vouk
Associate Vice Chancellor, Research Development and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science
Dr. Mladen Vouk is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, and oversees research development and administration at NC State. He also directs the NC State Data Science Initiative.
Dr. Vouk has extensive experience in both commercial software production and academic computing. He is the author/co-author of over 300 publications. His interests include software and security engineering, bioinformatics, scientific computing and analytics, information technology assisted education, and high-performance computing and clouds.
Dr. Vouk received his Ph.D. from the King’s College, University of London, U.K.
He is a member of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 2.5 on Numerical Software, and a recipient of the IFIP Silver Core award. He is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow, and a recipient of the IEEE Distinguished Service and Gold Core Awards. He is a member of several IEEE societies, and of American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), American Society for Quality (Senior Member), Association for Computing Machinery, and Sigma Xi.
