Past Chairman
Robert J. Mattauch - VCU Engineering School
Education
B.S., Electrical Engineering, Carnegie Institute of Technology, 1962
M.E., Electrical Engineering, North Carolina State University, 1963
Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, North Carolina State University, 1967
Experience
Dr. Mattauch served as chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Virginia 1987 through 1995. Under his leadership the Department hired 13 of its 19 tenure/tenure-track faculty members in highly specified research areas in a time of very limited resources. Each new faculty member was excellently qualified in her/his research area and all exhibit very good teaching abilities. In addition the Department completely restructured its undergraduate curriculum and was awarded an accreditation rating of 6V by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology.
Dr. Mattauch joined the U.Va. Department of Electrical Engineering in September of 1966, and founded its Semiconductor Device Laboratory six months later. He and his graduate students began research on millimeter wave semiconductor devices for radio astronomy applications in 1969. In 1971 their work yielded devices which were known internationally to exhibit the highest sensitivity in the millimeter wave range (100 GHz). By 1973 devices resulting from this research were used exclusively in the vast majority of radio telescopes around the world. In 1976 Mattauch and his graduate students began work on devices designed for detection of chlorine monoxide, the compound credited with the disassociation of ozone molecules, and were a part of the JPL led research team to perform the first bench-mark measurement of ClO concentration in the stratosphere. Until 1980 Mattauch was the only faculty member in the semiconductor device area and consequently taught all undergraduate and graduate courses, supervised a team of as many as eight graduate students, and served as principal investigator of as many as nine research grants/contracts at one time.
In January of 1996 Dr. Mattauch accepted the position of Commonwealth Professor and Chair of Electrical Engineering in the newly formed School of Engineering at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. In this position he is responsible for building the Electrical Engineering Program: defining computer engineering, communication systems, and microelectronics as areas of specialization, hiring faculty, constructing a curriculum, building the necessary program computational, instrumentation, and secretarial infrastructure, attracting and selecting highly qualified students, designing the electrical engineering and microelectronics clean-room portions of the new School of Engineering building, and enhancing visibility of the Program and School. He authored and was the technical presenter of the proposal to Motorola which resulted in a gift to VCU's School of Engineering of $6 million in microelectronics equipment and $1/2 million in cash.
On July 1, 1999 Dr. Mattauch became Dean of the VCU School of Engineering. In that position he oversaw the graduation of the School's founding class, the approval of the School's graduate program by the State Council on Higher Education of Virginia, SCHEV, and the School’s first accreditation visit.
Dr. Mattauch's career has been one of total devotion to excellence to the teaching and research at all levels. He has been awarded the Western Electric Fund Award of the American Society of Engineering Education for excellence in teaching of engineering students, the T. Holmes MacDonald Award of Eta Kappa Nu, as an outstanding electrical engineering educator for 1975, and was elected to the membership grade of Fellow of his professional society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, IEEE.
Dr. Mattauch has served as the thesis advisor for 14 Ph.D. students and 30 M.S. students, and is author of over 100 technical articles and one book chapter in the area of microelectronics. He has served on various committees of the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and served as the United States chair of Commission D (electronic devices) of the International Union of Radio Science, URSI. He has served as principal investigator on over 45 research projects for agencies such as NSF, NASA, NRL, ONR, JPL, NRAO, Virginia CIT, IBM, Aerojet ElectroSystems, Millitech Corp., Rutherford Appleton Labs, and the Max Planck Institute. In addition he holds five patents on semiconductor devices or fabrication techniques, has served as consultant to several industries and agencies, has received numerous awards for his teaching and research and is included in 11 different "Who's Who" listings. In his professional career thus far Dr. Mattauch has interacted with over 7000 students.
