Abdallah Appointed Provost of UNM

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.