Meyer Named Interim Dean of MCS

Curtis A. Meyer has been selected to serve as interim dean of the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon University, effective Aug. 1, 2023. A member of the CMU faculty for 30 years, Meyer is also the Otto Stern Professor of Physics and Associate Dean for Research at the Mellon College of Science.

A Fellow of the American Physical Society since 2004, Meyer has conducted research at national and international labs, including CERN and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. His current work is with the Gluonic Excitation Experiment (GlueX) at Jefferson Lab’s Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, where he is searching for new forms of matter, specifically the particles that hold quarks together in hybrid mesons. Meyer led the $60 million effort to design, build and commission the GlueX project, and served as the project’s elected spokesperson from 2007-2020.

Meyer joined the Carnegie Mellon faculty and the Department of Physics’ medium energy physics group in 1993. In addition to his research, he has taught courses ranging from first-year introductory physics to advanced graduate courses. He has been awarded Carnegie Mellon’s Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching and MCS’s Julius Ashkin Teaching Award, the university and college’s top awards for teaching. Meyer also has supervised or co-supervised 25 Ph.D. students and written two textbooks.

He has been an active member of the MCS administration since 2012, when he assumed the role of associate dean for faculty and graduate affairs. In 2017, he stepped down from that role to become the college’s first associate dean for research. He also served as interim co-director of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center from June 2022 to May 2023.

“Carnegie Mellon and the Mellon College of Science are very close to my heart. It has been a privilege to be part of their success and growth over the last 30 years,” said Meyer. “I look forward to continuing to be a champion for CMU and MCS as interim dean.”

A native of Salem, Oregon, Meyer earned his bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics at Oregon State University and completed his Ph.D. in experimental particle physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He then completed postdoctoral research at the University of Zurich, working at both CERN in Geneva and a particle physics lab in Hamburg.

Meyer succeeds Rebecca W. Doerge, who served as the Glen de Vries Dean of the Mellon College of Science from 2016-2023. Doerge was named provost of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.