The following message was sent to the Drexel community:
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to announce that, following a nationwide search, Eunice E. Santos, PhD, has been appointed inaugural dean of the College of Engineering and Computing (CoEC) — a pivotal milestone in Drexel’s Academic Transformation and in the formation of this new integrated College. In addition to serving as the inaugural dean, Dr. Santos has been appointed the inaugural Thomas E. and Christine D. Berk Endowed Professor and Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science, effective August 1, 2026.
A nationally recognized leader in computational social systems and academic innovation, Dr. Santos joins Drexel from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she served as dean of the School of Information Sciences (iSchool) from 2019-2025.
Her appointment reflects the University’s commitment to interdisciplinary education, research excellence and real-world impact at a moment of significant opportunity for engineering, computing and biomedical and information sciences. Dr. Santos’ vast scholarly contributions — for which she has been named a fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science — reflect the interdisciplinary breadth that defines the new College; she will hold faculty or courtesy faculty appointments in all three of its schools.
Her work aligns closely with Drexel’s strengths in experiential learning and industry partnership, and with the reality that today’s most complex challenges — from artificial intelligence and robotics to medical devices and sustainable infrastructure — are solved by interdisciplinary teams that transcend traditional academic boundaries. Dr. Santos’ record of transformational leadership and programmatic growth positions her to lead the College at a defining moment.
Under Dr. Santos’ leadership, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign iSchool was transformed from primarily a graduate-only program focused on library science into a broad-based information and data science college. During her time as dean, enrollment grew from approximately 800 to nearly 2,100 students; the faculty doubled; and both sponsored research and annual revenue more than doubled. Fundraising increased more than tenfold and the school fortified its reputation as a top international iSchool, including retaining its No. 1 national ranking in library and information sciences, held for nearly three decades (U.S. News & World Report).
Dr. Santos oversaw the growth and creation of innovative undergraduate degree programs, especially in data science, information systems and emerging areas, with leading-edge pathways in UX, data analytics and others. She also led the development of intercollege graduate programs and a lifelong learning unit, strengthening connections between academic programs, industry needs and societal impact.
Since receiving her PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Santos has held academic and administrative leadership roles spanning highly regarded colleges of engineering, science and information sciences, including Virginia Tech, Lehigh University, the University of Texas at El Paso and Illinois Institute of Technology.
Prior to her role at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she led interdisciplinary teams of medical practitioners and researchers focused on diabetes treatment guidelines and policy at the Chicago Center for Diabetes Translation Research and at the Institute for Translational Medicine. Her projects included using computational modeling to bridge the gap between the creation of new medical guidelines and their adoption among health care workers. At the same time, she served as the Ron Hochsprung Endowed Chair, department chair, and professor of computer science at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she had the foresight to develop undergraduate and graduate programs in artificial intelligence in 2019 — years ahead of most institutions.
As a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, Dr. Santos founded the Institute of Defense and Security; the institute had approximately $25 million in funding to develop technologies and methodologies for use by the U.S. government and other agencies, including tools related to disease monitoring and prediction, biometrics testing and social network analysis. She has secured tens of millions in research funding and holds patents for tools that help computers reason more intelligently and discover patterns and connections in big data.
We are excited to welcome Dr. Santos to Drexel at this historic moment for the University and look forward to the vision, leadership and collaboration she will bring to the College and the broader University community.
We extend our sincere thanks to Aleister Saunders, PhD, for his leadership as interim executive dean, and to Kapil Dandekar, PhD, Ali Shokoufandeh, PhD, and Paul Brandt-Rauf, ScD, MD, DrPH, for their leadership of the respective schools during this transition.
We are also grateful to Dean David Brown, PhD, for chairing the search committee, and to all search committee members and colleagues who contributed their time and expertise throughout this process.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Santos to Drexel and in supporting her as she prepares to take on this new role in August.
Sincerely,
Antonio Merlo, PhD
President
Paul E. Jensen, PhD
Executive Vice President
Nina Henderson Provost