Harriet Nembhard

Harriet B. Nembhard is dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Iowa and holds the Roy J. Carver Professorship in Engineering. As dean, Nembhard is the college’s chief executive officer, providing strategic vision and oversight for its academic programs, research initiatives, and administrative infrastructure. She leads this unit of 350 faculty and staff in fulfilling its mission to educate its 2,000 students and to engage in collaborative, cutting-edge engineering to positively impact our society.

Prior to this appointment, she held academic leadership positions at Oregon State University and Penn State University. Her scholarship is in applied statistics and operations research and has taken a multidisciplinary approach to improve complex systems across manufacturing and healthcare. This work converges with several other disciplines and has led to many advances including forecast-based monitoring and real options models for production systems, simulation tools for assessing emergency department patient flow, a patented imprint lithography manufacturing process for medical devices, and a sensor-based system to conduct early screening of Parkinson’s disease. These contributions helped to develop an ecosystem of improved practice and care quality for thousands of patients and framed a ground-breaking co-authored textbook, Healthcare Systems Engineering. She is widely published in leading professional journals, has served in several journal editorships, and has mentored numerous students and faculty. Many of her former PhD students and post-docs hold significant positions in industry and academia around the world.

Throughout her career, Nembhard has advanced a community of inclusive excellence where diversity, equity, and opportunity create a welcoming environment that enables everyone to flourish. She has led and participated in efforts in this regard across the academy and professional societies including NSF ADVANCE, NSF LATTICE, NSF TECAID, National Academy of Engineering, and Society of Women Engineers.

Nembhard’s work has been recognized with election as a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE), as a Fellow of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), and as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She received her PhD and MS in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan. She received a BS in industrial engineering from Arizona State University and a BA in management from Claremont McKenna College.