Ed Schlesinger is the Benjamin T. Rome Dean at Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering where he also is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

In his tenure as dean, he has launched numerous initiatives aimed at enhancing the student experience and the Whiting School of Engineering’s impacts on society. He has built educational, research, and outreach partnerships and has enhanced translational opportunities for Whiting faculty, students, and staff.

These efforts include:

  • launching the new Data Science and AI Institute, a truly translational investment, whose growth is set to effectively double the size of the school , making WSE one of the largest private engineering schools;
  • establishing the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute, opened on Earth Day 2021, to house energy-related research and educational programs across the university that address climate change;
  • creating the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy, a partnership with the JHU Applied Physics Laboratory, focused on ensuring the safe, secure, reliable, and predictable integration of autonomous systems into society;
  • forming the cross-divisional Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, a partnership between the Whiting School and JHU’s Bloomberg School of Public Health;
  • building the Doctor of Engineering program, providing professional engineers with the advanced technical expertise they need to succeed in industry and the public sector;
  • and developing the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare, a partnership with the School of Medicine, the Applied Physics Laboratory, and other JHU divisions that is aimed at enhancing the efficiency, effectiveness, and consistency of health care.

Schlesinger also helped lead a 10-year, multimillion-dollar partnership between the Barclay Elementary/Middle School and JHU, community organizations, and the Baltimore City Schools to create a pre-K through eighth-grade school focused on engineering education and computer skills as a means to spark student achievement in STEM fields.

He has published more than 250 articles and conference proceedings and holds 13 patents. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the SPIE, was president of the ECE Department Heads’ Association and served on its board of directors, was a member of the International Advisory Panel for the A*STAR Graduate Academy in Singapore, was on the Advisory Board for the ECE Department at Georgia Tech and the Technology Commercialization Advisory Board for Innovation Works. He currently is a member of the Fellowship Evaluation Panel of the National Research Foundation of Singapore. He was awarded a 2024 Public Service Medal by the Prime Minister’s Office Singapore and was appointed to the State of Maryland Governor’s Workgroup on Establishing a Science and Technology Best Practices and Innovation Network.

Prior to joining Johns Hopkins in 2014, Schlesinger was the David Edward Schramm Memorial Professor and head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also served as the director of the Data Storage Systems Center, associate department head in ECE, founding co-director of the General Motors Collaborative Research Laboratory, and director the DARPA MISCIC Center.

Schlesinger earned a BSc in physics at the University of Toronto and earned his MS and PhD in applied physics at the California Institute of Technology.