Kristina Ropella, Ph.D., will stay at the helm of Marquette University’s Opus College of Engineering as its permanent Opus Dean, university president Michael Lovell, Ph.D., announced on Tuesday.
Ropella, who is also a professor of biomedical engineering at Marquette, has served as interim Opus Dean since last July, when former dean, Robert Bishop, Ph.D., left his post at Marquette to become dean of the University of South Florida’s College of Engineering.
Her tenure as permanent dean will begin on July 1.
“Dr. Ropella is a renowned scholar, researcher and administrator who will bring to her new role a fine understanding of our business community,” Lovell said in a statement. “Her great passion for Marquette – developed over 25 years on our faculty and even earlier while earning a Marquette bachelor’s degree – will further strengthen our university in the years to come.”
A university search committee selected Ropella from a pool of three finalists. The other candidates were K.Y. Simon Ng, Ph.D., associate dean for research and graduate studies and professor of chemical engineering and materials science at Wayne State University, and Charles Fleddermann, Ph.D., the Gardner-Zemke Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and associate dean of the School of Engineering at the University of New Mexico.
Ropella has been part of Marquette’s biomedical engineering faculty at Marquette since 1990. She served as chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering from 2004 to 2013, when she was appointed the college’s executive associate dean.
As a professor, she has received multiple awards, including have twice been named winner of the college’s Outstanding Teacher Award, the university Robert and Mary Gettel Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2007, she was deemed the Wisconsin U.S. Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support for Education.
Outside the classroom, Ropella is internationally regarded for her research and expertise in biosignal processing and medical imaging for diagnostic medical devices. She has continuously partnered with neuroscientists and physicians from the Medical College of Wisconsin as well as industry stakeholders in her research and application work throughout her career.
Ropella also is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and recently was a member on its board of directors. She completed a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering at Marquette University and earned master’s and doctoral degrees from Northwestern University.
