Professor Atul Kelkar was appointed Dean of the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science at Binghamton University in July 2024. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Kelkar was the D. W. Reynolds Distinguished Professor and Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University, serving since August 2018. Before joining Clemson University, he was the Program Director of Dynamics Control and System Diagnostics Program in CMMI Division at National Science Foundation. Dr. Kelkar was an Associate Chair for Research and Technology Transfer in Mechanical Engineering and Professor-in-Charge, Industry Research and Entrepreneurship for the College of Engineering at Iowa State University where he was faculty for 18 years. He received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, in 1993 while working as a Research Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA.

Dr. Kelkar is a Fellow of ASME, Associate Fellow of AIAA, and Senior Member of IEEE. He is a recipient of NSF’s prestigious CAREER award in his early faculty career. He continues to lead various leadership activities in ASME and IEEE professional societies. He has held the positions of Associate Editor for key ASME and IEEE journals, served on Program Committees for various IEEE and ASME conferences, and organized and chaired several technical sessions at these conferences. His research has led to several patents and more than 160 archival publications which include several conference and journal articles, handbook chapters, and research monograph. He has mentored over 60 graduate students and several post-doctoral students. Even in his administrative position, he continues to serve as a mentor for graduate students and young faculty. His research has been in a general area of dynamics and control with focus on modeling and control of aerospace systems, control theory, active control of vibrations and noise, and very recently, in energy technologies. Dr. Kelkar is also a co-founder of five different technology start-ups which are very successful in acquiring competitive projects from NSF, NASA, and DoD. Three of these companies have also won awards at the state level and have successfully commercialized technologies developed by Dr. Kelkar. His research and entrepreneurial success have led to several newspaper and magazine articles and interviews on national and local public radio stations and local TV stations.