Lynden A. Archer has been appointed to a second term as the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering, Interim Provost John Siliciano ’75 announced Oct. 28.

The Cornell Board of Trustees’ Executive Committee voted Oct. 14 to approve a new five-year term, effective July 1, 2025. Archer’s tenure as dean began July 1, 2020.

“Lynden is an inspiring leader and collaborator who has led Cornell Engineering with distinction,” Siliciano said. “The college continues to be at the forefront of research, innovation and education, from material science to climate and energy systems. Through his stewardship and vision, the college is better positioned to generate the engineering solutions for the most pressing challenges our planet faces.”

Cornell Engineering is home to 228 tenured and tenure-track faculty members, 74 research faculty and lecturers, 20 professors of practice, 199 staff members, and 3,441 undergraduate and 2,583 graduate students, all spanning 10 departments, schools and programs. Twenty-five percent of Cornell Tech’s faculty hold joint appointments in the schools of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Operations Research and Information Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering.

A Cornell faculty member since 2000, Archer directed the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from 2010 to 2016 and the Cornell Energy Systems Institute from 2017 to 2020. 

Over the course of his first term as dean, Archer led a comprehensive effort to create a 10-year strategic plan, Cornell Engineering 2030, aimed at positioning the college as a center of excellence in education, research and technology innovation. 

“I am proudest of the bottom-up design of our 2030 plan and the impact it is already having on our research and education programs. We started with the departments, thinking about domains where our programs are already world-class and then identifying priority areas where modest investments would position the college for long-term leadership,” Archer said.

The priorities informed the collegewide plan, which focuses on building strength in certain priority research directions – data-driven decisions, machine learning and AI; engineering the energy transition; molecular design and manufacturing; precision medicine and human health; quantum information science and technology; and robotics and autonomous systems – domains all at the intersection of multiple engineering fields.

“Because the alignment between the college- and department-level priorities are built in, we’ve been able to make more rapid progress than I expected in hiring faculty, modernizing our aging infrastructure and in developing the programs needed to achieve the goals of the 2030 plan,” Archer said.

The 2030 plan defined priority directions in engineering education, as it did with research. To that end, the college has increased the use of endowed professorships to recognize its most outstanding teachers. With financial support from the McCormick family, it has expanded support for course innovations, instructor evaluation and for “teaching-the-teacher” programs offered by the McCormick Teaching Excellence Institute. It has developed EPICC awards to recognize staff and faculty who embody the college’s core values: excellence, purpose, innovation, community and collaboration. It has also developed a cohort of embedded tenure-track faculty whose scholarship is in engineering education research; three of these faculty have already been hired and the goal is to add five more over the next decade.

In addition, thanks to a substantial gift this summer, Cornell Engineering established the Nancy and Bob Selander Center for Engineering Leadership, making leadership development a central component of the college’s undergraduate education, graduate training and faculty development. 

“A key goal of the Selander Center is to develop a ‘Leadership for All’ program that will embed leadership skills training in the curriculum for every Cornell Engineering student, beginning with the Class of 2028,” Archer said. “Our goal is that in addition to receiving the exceptional technical education we’re known for, every member of our 2028 graduating class and beyond will be formally equipped with the tools needed to be effective leaders and team members – because no matter what field they ultimately pursue, experience teaches that these tools are required for engineers to truly make a difference. I think of it like the swim test, but this test is going to augment our students’ ability to excel in the workplace in technical and nontechnical domains.”

Additional accomplishments from Archer’s first term include:

• Renovation and expansion of one of the oldest buildings on the Pew Engineering quad, Thurston Hall, to create the new Martin Y. and Margaret Lee Tang Hall. The project doubled the size of the building and has created instructional laboratory and design studio spaces for students in the Nancy E. and Peter C. Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering, as well as research and instructional laboratories for its Department of Materials Science and Engineering.   
• Development of a program for Supporting Promising Research Opportunities and Unconventional Teams (SPROUTs). The program provides early stage funding to kick-start research by teams of investigators, including faculty at Cornell’s New York City campuses, pursuing novel research at the intersection of multiple fields. 
• Oversight of more than 40 new hires in the college’s priority research areas, contributing to the development of quantum information science and technology, as well as AI for science and sustainability, as key strengths in the college.
• In FY24, Cornell Engineering raised $93.3 million in net gifts and commitments as part of its fundraising campaign, a new record for the college.

Looking ahead, Archer will oversee:

• Strategic projects to modernize Cornell Engineering infrastructure, building by building, including an expansion of Duffield Hall into what’s now Phillips Hall. This project will support programs in multiple college priority areas – robotics, quantum information science and technology, and semiconductor devices and materials design.
• Investments in faculty and programs in the college’s priority research areas and programs, including engineering education research.
• Cross-college collaborations on research and education with Weill Cornell Medicine in data-driven medicine and women’s health, through the Engineering Innovations in Medicine initiative; with the College of Architecture, Art and Planning in establishing the multicollege Design Tech department; and with the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business in leadership education and financial engineering.
• Development of a new major in Earth and atmospheric sciences that will leverage faculty expertise in geoscience, climate systems engineering, atmospheric modeling and natural-resource management to prepare students for new jobs in engineering the energy transition.
• A Leadership Academy that leverages the Selander Center’s “Leadership for All” program for undergraduate students to develop leadership and team work competencies for the college’s faculty and professional masters students.

Throughout his first term, Archer has maintained a vibrant research program focused on interface science and fluid dynamics in electrochemical energy storage systems.

He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. His research has led to the creation of a technology company, Sionic Energy, that is commercializing electrodes and electrolytes for long duration storage of energy in batteries. His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation award for special creativity; the Thompson-Reuters “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” recognition in materials science; and the James and Mary Tien Excellence in Teaching Award.

Archer earned his B.S. in chemical engineering with an emphasis in polymer science from the University of Southern California in 1989 and his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Stanford University in 1993. He was a postdoctoral member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories before entering academia in 1994.