Albert Pisano, dean of UC San Diego’s highly-ranked Jacobs School of Engineering, has canceled plans to retire and will take on the added role of special adviser to Chancellor Pradeep Khosla. He had been scheduled to leave his job in late June.
“I realized my heart was still here on campus,” Pisano told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “At the same time, I saw there was an opportunity to formalize my many efforts to make sure engineers and computer scientists are connected to everyone across campus interested in collaborative problem-solving for the public good.”
In recent years, Pisano had raised $180 million to build Franklin Antonio Hall, a cathedral-like research and teaching center that’s key to the university’s planned expansion and enrichment in many fields, notably chip technology, wearable sensors, robotics and energy.
The university said Pisano, who is 69, received a five-year reappointment as dean, with a merit increase of 20 percent. His new salary is $559,400. He also will receive $46,800 pay in his role as adviser to the chancellor.
He has spent more than 41 years in the University of California system, serving in a variety of teaching, research and leadership posts.
Overall, UCSD spent $1.53 billion on research during fiscal 2022, maintaining the school’s status as one of the largest research campuses in the country. That meant UCSD ranked seventh, according to an analysis by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The top spender was Johns Hopkins University, followed by UC San Francisco, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, the University of Washington and UCLA. The University of Wisconsin finished eighth, just behind UCSD, while Duke University was ninth and Stanford 10th.
