Kafatos, Chandhoke to Serve As Co-Deans of New College of Science

February 17, 2006

By Daniel Walsch

Menas Kafatos

Vikas Chandhoke

Menas Kafatos, currently dean of the School of Computational Sciences, and Vikas Chandhoke, currently associate dean of research for the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and director of life sciences, will serve as co-deans of George Mason's newly created College of Science (COS), effective July 1, Provost Peter Stearns announced.

The appointment is for two years, giving the university time to decide upon a permanent leader of this new academic unit.

Kafatos had originally been named to partner with Daniele Stuppa, dean of CAS. But shortly afterward, Struppa announced plans to resign from the university in June to become provost of Chapman University in California.

COS is the result of a decision to split CAS into two major academic units: COS and the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.

COS will serve as the center of research and education in the natural sciences and mathematics at Mason. Its overriding mission includes providing outstanding scholarship in concert with excellent teaching, and developing human and technical resources required to address the current and future needs of society.

Academic departments falling under COS include Bioinformatics and Computational Biology; Chemistry and Biochemistry; Climate Dynamics; Computational and Data Sciences; Earth Systems and Geoinformation Sciences; Environmental Science and Policy; Geography; Mathematical Sciences; Molecular and Microbiology; and Physics and Astronomy.

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