President Jayathi Y. Murthy, a national leader in higher education engineering teaching, research and service, began her service as Oregon State University’s 16th president on September 9, 2022.

As OSU’s president, Murthy is committed to improving access to college for all learners; advancing student success, undergraduate graduation rates and inclusive excellence throughout the university; expanding OSU’s strong research portfolio by investing in research infrastructure; and supporting faculty excellence in teaching, scholarship, research, and Extension and engagement programs.

Prior to joining Oregon State, Murthy served as the first woman dean of the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science from January 2016. During her tenure, she made expanding access to a UCLA engineering education a top priority by deepening relationships with local community colleges, increasing outreach to underrepresented minority groups and easing the transition for transfer students. She led the effort to establish Women in Engineering at UCLA – a program that supports the full participation of women in engineering. While at UCLA, she was active in helping raise more than $330 million in philanthropy.

Jayathi Murthy also served as chair of the mechanical engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin from 2012-2015; worked as a mechanical engineering professor at Purdue University from 2001-2011; and served as a professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh from 1998 to 2001. Murthy began her academic career at Arizona State University in 1984. From 1988 to 1998, Murthy worked at New Hampshire-based Fluent, Inc., a developer and vendor of the world’s most widely used computational fluid dynamics software. She led the development of algorithms and software that still form the core of the company’s products.

Murthy’s research interests include nanoscale heat transfer, computational fluid dynamics, and simulations of fluid flow and heat transfer for industrial applications. Recently, her focus is on sub-micron thermal transport, multiscale multi-physics simulations of micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS) and the uncertainty quantifications involved in those systems. She has authored over 330 technical publications.

She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), foreign fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the recipient of many honors, including the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award in 2016, the ASME Electronics and Photonics Packaging Division Clock Award, and ASME Kate Gleason Award in 2023.

Murthy received a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Washington State University and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, where she was named a distinguished alumna in 2012.