@font-face { font-family: “ＭＳ 明朝”; }@font-face { font-family: “Cambria Math”; }@font-face { font-family: “Cambria”; }@font-face { font-family: “Garamond”; }@font-face { font-family: “MinionPro-Regular”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }p.bodycopyNewPageDesign, li.bodycopyNewPageDesign, div.bodycopyNewPageDesign { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 9pt; line-height: 11pt; font-size: 10pt; font-family: MinionPro-Regular; color: black; }.MsoChpDefault { font-family: Cambria; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }

The first Sam Bloomfield Chair in Engineering Innovation at Wichita State has been appointed.

Vis Madhavan was selected to be the new chair in Engineering Innovation last month.

The position is named after Sam Bloomfield, an aeronautical engineer and entrepreneur who was president of Wichita-based Swallow Airplane Company. The chair holds the position for three years.

Madhavan works as a professor in the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department at Wichita State. He is also a founder and CEO of the Fairmount Technologies company.

Madhavan said the administration’s plan for this new position is to push forward innovative approaches in engineering.

“I think they envision this chair to be a driver of innovation,” he said. “A driver that helps realize the benefits of innovation toward education. But, at this stage, I was assured that the full scope of that vision is not going to be expected of me.

“At this stage, the endowment is just going into place … It is mostly recognition more than significant monetary benefit.”

Mahdi Kashani, general manager of Fairmount Technologies, said Madhavan is suited for this new position.

“He has developed patents,” Kashani said. “He has worked on several proposals that have commercial goals. So it’s not only innovation in academia. He also has been working on innovative research that can be a basis for a business. So you can build a business around that innovation. I think that’s what makes him the best candidate in my mind.”

The chair is not explicitly related to Innovation Campus. However, Madhavan said no agenda is set for him regarding that effort.

The introduction of the chair could help facilitate the transition to Innovation Campus, but he was not officially asked to be a part of the Innovation Campus developments, he said.

The WSU administration gave Madhavan a list of the key responsibilities of this chair. They are “to maintain the research productivity, inspire students and mentors … create and instill an entrepreneurial spirit in them, and the specific thing was to join the Pathways to Innovation team,” Madhavan said.

“Pathways to Innovation” is a relatively new engineering program.

“This Pathways to Innovation team — I was already a part of that, but not very active,” Madhavan said. “That is a program that has been going on for almost a year now in the college of engineering where they are trying to find ways to infuse innovation and character into the curriculum. By that, what we mean is: students should understand what it is to be innovative. How would they go about trying to look at things from an innovator’s perspective? And then to actualize any ideas that they come up with.”

Madhavan said his goal is to help students find new ways to be productive in engineering.

“What I can offer to do is to give [students] general guidance on what it takes [to be innovative]. My role, the correct way to describe it is: a catalyst,” he said.

Engineering senior Suveen Emmanuel said Madhavan is qualified for the new chair.

“I think he probably earned it,” Emmanuel said. “I’ve seen his work… I’ve seen how he works hard on his projects when I was his student… And he points out what you can do.”