Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz is an American nuclear engineer. On April 2, 2024, he was named the sole finalist to be Chancellor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Previously, he has served as the provost and Harold and Inge Marcus Dean of Engineering at Penn State College of Engineering. During his earlier tenure at North Carolina State University as head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, he received that university's diversity award in 2011 for expanding the female faculty of the department twofold and hiring the first professors who were minorities.

Career

A native of Illinois, Schwartz attended the University of Illinois at Urbana before pursuing a graduate degree in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1] After graduation, he relocated briefly to Japan, where he served at the National Research Institute for Metals as one of the first Science and Technology Agency of Japan Fellows.[2] After returning to the United States, he worked at his undergraduate alma-mater as an assistant professor before moving to Florida State University as the lead of the HTS Magnets and Materials Group. In 2009, he relocated to North Carolina State University as Kobe Steel Distinguished Professor, where he led the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. During his tenure there, Schwartz worked to increase the diversity of the engineering department, doubling the number of female faculty and bringing into the college its first professors who were minorities in that field.[1] For this work, he received the university's diversity award. In August 2017, he received the role of Harold and Inge Marcus Dean of Engineering at Penn State College of Engineering.