Dr. Okenwa Okoli named Dean of the UofM’s Herff College of Engineering

Thursday, July 14 - Dr. Okenwa Okoli has been named dean of the UofM’s Herff College of Engineering, effective Jan. 1, 2023.

Okoli is a professor and former chair of the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department at the Florida A&M-Florida State University College of Engineering, and the Associate Director of the High-Performance Materials Institute (HPMI) at Florida State.

“I am moved and very excited at the opportunity to serve the Herff College of Engineering, the Memphis community and the State of Tennessee,” said Okoli. “I look forward to working with the students, staff, faculty, alumni and other stakeholders to build and reach even greater heights through transformational research, teaching excellence and research entrepreneurship, all in an environment focused on student success and highlights the strengths in our diversity.”

His innovative research efforts encompass the cost-effective manufacture of customizable multiscale multifunctional composites; re-engineering and optimization of UHMWPE recipe in combination with the confinement of ceramic structures to achieve enhanced personnel protective armor; and a paradigm shift creating inherent and ubiquitous damage sensing in advanced composite structures.

Okoli’s research efforts have garnered $36 million as PI or co-PI in external funding. He has 10 U.S. patent applications (awarded and pending) and has received the R&D 100 Award in 2004, the ACMA Best Processing Technical Paper in 2004 and the SAMPE Outstanding Paper Award in 2015. A recipient of Florida State’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Distinguished Service Award, he has contributed to efforts to recruit and retain U.S. students in STEM graduate programs with a focus of bridging the achievement gap in the underrepresented minorities. He is a chartered engineer and a chartered scientist of the Engineering and Science Councils (UK), respectively.

Okoli received a bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Lagos (Nigeria), a Master of Science in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from the University of Warwick (UK) and a PhD in Engineering from the University of Warwick (UK).