Recognizing former dean’s years of service and leadership in the Fulton Schools
Professor Deirdre Meldrum is retiring from Arizona State University to pursue new professional opportunities in cancer prevention technologies and therapeutics. Upon her retirement, Professor Meldrum will hold the title of Professor of Electrical Engineering Emeritus and Dean of Engineering Emeritus.
While at ASU, Professor Meldrum was a tenured full-professor who at various times held the positions of Dean of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, ASU Senior Scientist, and Center Director of the Center for Ecogenomics and the Center for Biosignatures Discovery Automation at the ASU Biodesign Institute. As Dean, she led 210 faculty members, 300 staff and 7,000 students and was instrumental in successfully transforming the Schools of Engineering into an organization fully aligned with the U.S. Grand Challenges outlined by the National Academy of Engineering.
Professor Meldrum has mentored hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, and research faculty at ASU and previously while Professor at the University of Washington. With 35 years of leadership experience in engineering research and development, Professor Meldrum has led over $80 million in federal (NIH, NSF, USDOT, NASA, NOAA), state (Washington, Arizona, Florida) and private (Keck Foundation, Moore Foundation, British Petroleum) funded research projects deploying large interdisciplinary teams spanning the topics of automation for genomics, microscale systems for biological applications, biosignatures discovery, robotics, sensors, Sensorbots for biogeochemical sensing in the oceans, flexible structures for space applications, and AI control for freeway transportation systems. She also served as the Director and Principal Investigator of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Center of Excellence in Genomic Sciences (CEGS): Microscale Life Sciences Center for 13 years, pioneering live single-cell analysis technologies to study neoplastic progression of cells from normal to dysplasia to cancer, and cellular heterogeneity in cancer and other diseases.
Most recently, for her innovation and substantial patent track record, she was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Professor Meldrum also was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows in recognition of her “outstanding contributions and pioneering work in the automation of innovative single-cell analysis systems for discovering biosignatures that predict human health and disease.”
Professor Meldrum’s other honors include an NIH Special Emphasis Research Career Award, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and she served two terms as a member of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and as a member of the advisory board for Microsoft Research. Internationally, she served on the Swiss NSF panel for the SystemsX Systems Biology Program.
Professor Meldrum received the B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA, the M.S. in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and the Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. She completed the prestigious Stanford Executive Program in the Stanford Graduate School of Business.