Dr. Robert Mitchell has been Dean
of Engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla since August, 1994.
He received his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Lamar University of Beaumont, Texas, in 1967. He was a National Science Foundation Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his master's and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering in 1968 and 1972, respectively.
He was on the faculty of the Electrical Engineering Department at Purdue University from 1972-1988. During part of that time, he served as Assistant Dean of Engineering and as an Associate Director of the Engineering Research Center for Intelligent Manufacturing Systems.
Dr. Mitchell joined the University of Texas at Arlington faculty in 1988 as professor and chairman of electrical engineering. In 1991 Mitchell became director of the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Electron Devices and Systems on the campus. The center is a cooperative venture between industry and the campus. In 1993 he was a co-founder of the NSF Agile Aerospace Manufacturing Research Center on the UTA campus.
His research interests are in the area of computer vision and image processing systems with emphasis on manufacturing productivity. His latest research project is for $3M from the Army Research Office for landmine detection and neutralization. He has over 120 technical publications and has supervised 23 Ph.D. dissertations in these areas. He is proud of his teaching awards from Purdue.
Mitchell served on the Board of Overseers for the Missouri Quality Award
from 1995-1996. He currently serves on the Industry/University/Government
Roundtable for Enhancing Engineering Education, the Educational Advisory
Group of the National Society of Professional Engineers and on the Board
of Directors of the Association of Western Universities.