UNM President Robert G. Frank has appointed Chaouki Abdallah to the position of Provost. In a letter to the UNM community, Frank spoke about the appointment and the reasons UNM will not do a national search.

"While a search would validate Dr. Abdallah's skills, and likely, we might find one or two others who could compete with Dr. Abdallah, I think we would choose him from a pool based on his knowledge and experience with UNM. In my mind, it is not worth eight months of searching and thousands of dollars to achieve this outcome."

Frank said Abdallah enjoys widespread popularity in the UNM community and support from the Faculty Senate and Deans Council. To view the letter, visit: Frank's letter to UNM community.

Abdallah had been originally appointed interim provost in 2011.  Before that he chaired the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Abdallah's areas of research are systems theory, adaptive control, nonlinear systems, robotics, robust control, fault detection, complexity of control systems and networking. He continues to teach and advise graduate students.

He is a senior member in the IEEE, a professional engineering organization and a recipient of the IEEE Third Millennium Medal.  Abdallah has a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.E. from Youngstown State University, Ohio.