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Nicholas Mastronarde named chair of electrical engineering
Nicholas Mastronarde has been named chair of the UB Department of Electrical Engineering. He succeeds Jonathan Bird, who has served as chair of the department since 2017.
A UB faculty member since 2011, Mastronarde was the department's former co-director of undergraduate studies. His research focuses on next-generation wireless networks, drone networks and reinforcement learning.
He has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers, holds two patents, and has led over $5 million in sponsored research. He has received several awards, including the 2022 UB Teaching Innovation Award and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ 2020 Senior Teacher of the Year Award.
Under Bird’s tenure as chair, the Department of Electrical Engineering has grown in reputation, size and impact through the recruitment of outstanding senior and early-career scholars. This has propelled the national ranking of the department to its highest level in history, with record sustained levels of research expenditures and high-impact funded programs.
Returning to a faculty role, Bird will continue his study of the electrical properties of emerging nanomaterials and nanodevices. He is also the inaugural director of the UB Center for Advanced Semiconductor Technologies, which he helped establish in 2024 to meet the increasing need for next-generation semiconductors.
