An accomplished couple will soon join the ranks of the University.
Next month Robert Calderbank will become the new dean of natural sciences in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and his wife, Ingrid Daubechies, will be a professor in the mathematics department starting Jan. 1, 2011.
The couple comes from Princeton University, where Calderbank served as director of the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics and a professor of electrical engineering and mathematics. When he starts at Duke, Calderbank will also serve as a full professor in the department of computer science, with appointments in mathematics and electrical engineering. Daubechies was a full professor of mathematics at Princeton.
Calderbank succeeds Alvin Crumbliss, who will serve next year as interim dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences and dean of Trinity College. Crumbliss, Bishop-MacDermott chemistry professor, wrote in an e-mail that the University actively recruited both new faculty members.
Calderbank, who was vice president for research at AT&T before joining Princeton’s faculty in 2004, said he and his wife had been considering Duke since Daubechies spoke at Duke in April. Daubechies gave the Annual Sponer Presidential Lecture and two speeches in the Gergen Mathematical Lecture Series.
“It wasn’t that one of us was targeted and then it was found out that there was someone else,” Calderbank said. “We go places together. We are not a typical couple in that we have been recruited jointly before. When I left AT&T, we interviewed at 12 places and got 12 offers.”
Crumbliss said the University often finds a job for a faculty recruitment’s spouse, but he noted that this case was a joint recruitment where both faculty members happened to be married.
“Professor Daubechies was a faculty recruitment target quite independent of who her spouse is,” Crumbliss said, adding that Daubechies will start in 2011 because she is currently on sabbatical in Europe. “She is a distinguished mathematician who, for example, is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and three foreign academies of science. She is an international superstar in mathematics.”
Crumbliss added that Calderbank was recruited because of his diverse background.
“His expertise fits very well with our strategic objectives for developing programs and faculty in computer science, mathematics and electrical and computer engineering,” Crumbliss said. “We can look at this as a very cost effective faculty recruitment which resulted in a new faculty member with a high research profile in three areas and proven administrative ability.”
Calderbank said he was attracted to Duke’s collaborative spirit. He will spend the first month or so at Duke seeking advice about how he can improve the University’s programs in the natural sciences, starting with a conversation with his new boss, Crumbliss.
“I am excited about the interdisciplinary community and just a whole bunch of people that seem to be energized about creating communities that are more than the sum of their parts,” he said.
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