Jennifer Sinclair Curtis is Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Davis. In her role as the Associate Dean for Research at the University of Florida, she supported faculty and researchers in developing and maintaining research programs, including promoting interdisciplinary research, working with research sponsors and funding agencies, coordinating the college’s research institutes and ensuring regulatory compliance. She also served as Director of the Florida Energy Systems Consortium, which promotes collaboration between Florida’s public universities to conduct research, education and commercialization in energy technology and as the Chair of Chemical Engineering. Before joining the College of Engineering at the University of Florida, she served as the Head of the Department of Freshman Engineering and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at Purdue University.

Her research focuses on the flow behavior of particles, with applications ranging from food processing, pharmaceutical manufacture, and the aerospace, energy and mining industries to natural processes such as debris flows and sediments. Her work has made important contributions to understanding how fluids and solid particles behave together.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Purdue University and her Master’s and Ph.D. from Princeton University. She has served on the faculty at Lafayette College, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Arizona and Purdue University, in addition to visiting professorships at the University of Minnesota; and at Monash University and the University of New South Wales in Australia.

She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the American Society for Engineering Education and has served on numerous national advisory boards and committees, including currently co-chairing the National Academies Chemical Science Roundtable.