Fadil Santosa, an established mathematician with broad interests, has been appointed head of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics. Santosa succeeds Laurent Younes, who had served with distinction in that role since 2014.
Santosa joins the Whiting School of Engineering from the University of Minnesota School of Mathematics, where he was a professor and formerly directed the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications. His research focuses on inverse problems, nondestructive testing, wave phenomena, optics, photonics, optimization, optimal design, and homogenization methods. He is known for his efforts to bridge the gap between mathematical research in academia and industry, and to develop programs to prepare students in the mathematical sciences for careers outside of academia.
Santosa is currently working on wave propagation in highly heterogeneous media, optimal experiment design for inverse problems, and plasmonic phenomena in two-dimensional materials. He holds two patents: one for multifocal optical device design and another for symbol-based decoding of optical codes. He is a Fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics and of the American Mathematical Society.