Interim Engineering Dean Takes On Another Post

Though Frans A. Spaepen will wrap up his term as interim dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences on July 1, he isn't finished with temporary positions just yet.

The applied physics professor will serve as interim director of the Center for Nanoscale Systems, where his most visible responsibility will be the far-from-nano task of reducing the center's $6.1 million budget by as much as 20 percent while seeking to maintain the quality of its research opportunities.

Colleagues praised Spaepen both for his administrative experience and his background as a material scientist.

“I think he enjoyed being head of [Harvard's] Rowland Institute, but he has sort of a sense of duty and responsibility to make things work well,” said Applied Physics Professor Robert M. Westervelt. “It can get kind of hard to cut [costs], and he can handle it carefully.”

Incoming Engineering School Dean Cherry A. Murray praised Spaepen as “the obvious person” for the job, adding that this very appointment demonstrates that Harvard is “committed to maintaining the excellence of CNS.”

“It’s a regional resource that we don’t want to cause to be less than stellar,” she said.

Spaepen will work with Murray and Science Divisional Dean Jeremy Bloxham to explore and implement different cost-cutting strategies. According to Murray, some possibilities include discontinuing certain services, identifying efficiencies, and raising user fees for facilities.

All researchers who use the center are charged a fee, according to Murray, but only researchers from outside companies pay “the real cost.” CNS currently subsidizes professors—both from Harvard and other universities. But Murray stressed that although they would be looking seriously into raising the user fee for professors, they do not wish to “disrupt” faculty research.

Not everything is doom and gloom at the nanoscale level, professors said. CNS is set to upgrade its equipment soon, and Westervelt said that an outside committee recently recommended that CNS invest more in microfluidic systems in health-related areas, which are “rather inexpensive” compared to semiconductors.

While SEAS currently covers only $500,000 of CNS’ $6.1 million budget, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences pays for $3.1 million, with user fees and other revenue making up the difference, according to Bloxham. Murray said that center usage appears to be split evenly among SEAS and FAS professors, so she has already offered to cover a larger percentage of the budget in coming years. She said that it would be fair for SEAS to cover at least as much as FAS or even more.

The recession has hit SEAS less hard than FAS, since only 35 percent of SEAS’ budget comes from the endowment, according to Murray: most of the remainder stems from federal research grants. Just over half of the FAS budget, on the other hand, is endowment-dependent.

Spaepen, who declined to be interviewed for this article, is still taking things one step at a time.

“I should not make any comment until I become director,” he said on the phone. “Let me just withhold my comments until I get there, OK? Bye.”

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.