As Oregon State University’s Senior Advisor to the Provost for Strategic Initiatives, Dr. Belinda Batten provides research, planning, and execution for selected university-level strategic initiatives and projects that span academic and administrative portfolios. In this role, Dr. Batten provides leadership to accelerate selected high-priority initiatives and ensure their success. Currently, she serves as the planning executive for the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex, a $200m project that will house on of the nation’s most powerful supercomputers and will increase the university’s support for the semiconductor and technology industry in Oregon and beyond when it opens in 2025.

From 2017 – 2021, Dr. Batten served as the Executive Associate Dean in the College of Engineering at OSU. Previous to this role, she was director of the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center (now Pacific Marine Energy Center). She served as the head of Mechanical Engineering at OSU beginning in 2003 before also becoming the Head of Industrial Engineering in 2006. In 2007, she led the formation of the School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering where she served as head until 2011.

Prior to leadership roles at OSU, she held positions as program manager for dynamics and control at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, a professor of mathematics at Virginia Tech, and assistant and associate professor of mathematics at OSU. While assistant professor, she received an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship and spent a year and a half at the Universitaet Trier, Germany.

As a professor of mechanical engineering, Dr. Batten is internationally renowned for research in modeling and control of distributed parameter systems, and development of computational algorithms for reduced order controllers. Her research includes dynamics and control of wave energy converters, and has been funded by DARPA, U.S. Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Dr. Batten received her Ph.D. from Clemson University, her M.S. from University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and her B.S. from the University of Maryland.

At Oregon State 1993–98 and since 2003.

Background:

• Executive Associate Dean, College of Engineering, 2017 - 2021
• NNMREC Director, 2011–2017
• MIME School Head,  2007–11
• Department Head, Mechanical Engineering, Oregon State University, 2003–07
• Program Manager, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, 2001–03
• Associate Professor & Professor, Virginia Tech, 1998–2003
• Assistant and Associate Professor, Oregon State University, 1993–98 
• Postdoctoral Research Associate, North Carolina State University, 1992–93