Dear members of the FAS and SEAS communities,
It is my pleasure to announce that David C. Parkes will become the next dean of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), effective October 15, 2023.
David is a distinguished scholar of technology and society, who drives innovation and insight by bringing together people, disciplines, and industries around shared questions. He is a beloved teacher, advisor, and mentor who invests in preparing the next generation of leaders. And, he is a committed and insightful academic leader, experienced in addressing a broad range of opportunities and challenges facing SEAS, FAS, and the University. David approaches everything he undertakes with energy and a sense of possibility, and will bring to the deanship his characteristic fairness, thoughtfulness, collegiality, and willingness to listen to others that have made him such a trusted and valued colleague.
A member of the Harvard faculty since 2001, David is currently the George F. Colony Professor of Computer Science. His research focuses on questions of artificial intelligence and machine learning, especially as this relates to multi-agent systems, economics, and society. He founded the EconCS research group within SEAS, and for the past year, he has been a Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, a research laboratory that aims to develop artificial intelligence to address real-world problems. He has been recognized with many honors, including election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). He received the NSF Career Award, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and Thouron Award.
David has taken on leadership roles both within SEAS and across the University. From 2013 to 2017, he served as SEAS Area Dean for Computer Science and, in the past several years, has built and led several significant cross-disciplinary, cross-School research initiatives. Most notably, since 2017 he has co-directed with Professor Francesca Dominici Harvard’s Data Science Initiative, a University-wide effort that works across academic disciplines to shape the emerging discipline of data science, enable data-driven policy development, and analyze the implications of big data for human society. He has also served with Professor Karim Lakhani as the founding co-director of the Harvard Business Analytics Program, a joint effort among SEAS, FAS, and HBS to train leaders to leverage AI and analytics in advancing their organizations.
David is a highly respected FAS, SEAS, and University citizen who has been repeatedly sought for his judgment and insight on a range of critical topics. He has been deeply involved in planning related to SEAS’s Allston campus expansion, for example, co-chairing the FAS/SEAS Committee on Allston and SEAS. In 2020, he was tapped by then-FAS Dean Claudine Gay to serve on the FAS Study Group, whose recommendations serve as the foundation of the current FAS strategic planning process.
David is no less accomplished as a teacher, advisor, and mentor. He received the FAS’s Roslyn Abramson Award for Teaching and the SEAS Capers McDonald Award for Mentoring, was recognized as a Harvard College Professor, and was twice named one of Harvard College’s favorite professors. Moreover, he was a co-lead in developing and then co-chairing the Master’s Degree in Data Science from 2017 to 2022, jointly led by the Computer Science and Statistics faculties, and he served as the inaugural Faculty Chair of the Summer Program for Undergraduates in Data Science, launched in 2021.
Along with President Claudine Gay and Provost Alan Garber, I want to thank the many people who provided input to inform this search. Your insights and advice were foundational to our understanding SEAS’ needs, and we are enormously grateful for your engagement in this process. We are particularly indebted to the members of the faculty advisory committee, who provided essential perspectives from across SEAS and beyond and who helped guide the search toward this excellent outcome.
In addition, I deeply appreciate Mike Smith’s willingness to serve as interim dean while the search for the next dean was completed. Mike is one of Harvard’s most respected and experienced leaders, and his service in this role is just another example of his extraordinary generosity and commitment to the University. He will continue to serve as interim SEAS dean until Dean Parkes takes office.
I hope you will all join me in warmly welcoming David Parkes as the next dean of SEAS. I could not be more excited to have his partnership and to support his leadership in the years to come.
Sincerely,
Hopi Hoekstra
PS: For more information, please see the Harvard Gazette article.
Hopi Hoekstra
Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
C. Y. Chan Professor of Arts and Sciences
Xiaomeng Tong and Yu Chen Professor of Life Sciences