Dr. Anind Dey, originally from Salmon Arm, was named the newest dean of the University of Washington’s iSchool in June of 2017, officially taking over the position on Jan. 2.
Anind, the son of Santosh and Prabha Dey, two school teachers from Salmon Arm, has lead a storied career as an academic, professor and researcher, working in the aerospace industry as well as within academic circles before accepting the position of dean.
The iSchool is a multi-disciplinary department of the University of Washington that seeks to explore the relationship between information, technology, and people. Graduates of information schools use their expertise to put massive amounts of information into context and interpret that data into something useable and applicable to the real world.
Dey, who took over as dean of the iSchool on Jan. 2, served for the past three years as director and chair of Carnegie Mellon University’s prestigious Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCI) in Pittsburgh, where he had been a member of the faculty since 2005. Dey found a home in the HCI after earning his master’s degree in aerospace engineering in 1995 and his doctorate in computer science in 2000, both at Georgia Tech. He earned his undergraduate degree in computer engineering at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and it was an experience as an undergrad that launched his career in applied science.
While visiting Montreal for an engineering conference he happened upon a flight simulator on display, intrigued by the way this simulation could take data and transform it into an almost-real experience.
“It was the fact that you could use technology to make experiences so real,” Dey said in a Q&A with the University of Washington. “When I was in the flight simulator, I felt like I was in a plane. I felt the ground shaking, I felt movement, I felt the takeoff. The fidelity just blew me away.”
After enrolling in Georgia Tech for his master’s degree in aerospace engineering his research focused on rocket science, including a project where he programmed a full-size helicopter drone to take off on its own, locate a person in the woods and then drop off rations.
This new position sees Dey and his his wife, Jennifer Mankoff, their 14-year-old son, Kavi, and 12-year-old daughter, Nisha, relocating to Seattle, WA from Pittsburgh, PA, where he was previously working at Carnegie Mellon University. This migration back towards the west coast is a welcome change for Dey, who is happy to be closer to home, even if it’s on the southern side of the 49th parallel.
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