Lance Collins knows a thing or two about turbulence -- literal and figurative -- which should stand him in good stead as Cornell engineering's 13th dean.

"While this has been a very difficult period, the College of Engineering is in great shape -- thanks to Interim Dean Chris Ober -- and is poised to move into a very exciting time," says Collins, a fluid dynamics expert and former director of mechanical and aerospace engineering; he became dean July 1, succeeding Ober.

Optimistic that the economy is showing signs of recovery, Collins knows that, at least in the beginning, his biggest challenge will be continuing financial constraints. Nevertheless, "we will continue to hire. We have a significant portion of our faculty that is of retirement age, and we must renew," he says. "There's no other option."

The college will continue its tradition of excellence by targeting such strategic priorities as bioengineering and renewable energy. "Sustainability is a natural rallying point," says Collins, for the entire university. "Very few universities offer the comprehensive breadth and depth that we do with respect to this particular problem," he says. "If not at Cornell, then where? … Cornell is in a position to leave its mark, and we must see that through."

The realization that science could make a difference is what drew Collins to engineering in the first place. The son of a carpenter, Collins spent two weeks in the Minority Introduction to Engineering program at Lafayette College when he was a rising high school senior from Long Island. "I didn't know what an engineer did. And I loved it," he says.

Collins went on to earn a B.S.E. in chemical engineering at Princeton University (1981) and then M.S. (1983) and Ph.D. (1987) at the University of Pennsylvania. Following a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratories, he taught for 11 years at Pennsylvania State University, where he earned the rank of full professor and met his wife Sousan, a nurse originally from Iran. The two have a 10-year-old daughter, Ashley.

It was also at Penn State that Collins made a discovery in powder manufacturing that generated a new area of study helping to refine climate models.

"If you put an initially uniform distribution of droplets in a turbulent flow and you turn on the turbulence, they don't stay uniform. They actually clump up." Collins showed that this clustering could increase the collision rate of the particles up to 100 times.

A collaboration with meteorology graduate student Raymond Shaw led to explaining, using the same phenomenon, why clouds always formed faster than predicted by modern weather models. Researchers the world over now study the role of turbulence in cloud formation. "Clouds modulate the incoming energy from the sun, and their impact leads to the largest uncertainty in global climate models," Collins says. "That's the big problem that we want to have some impact on."

Collins came to Cornell in 2002, serving as director of graduate studies for aerospace engineering from 2003 to 2005, when he became the S.C. Thomas Sze Director of the college's Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; he subsequently hired five faculty members and expanded the graduate program.

As dean, Collins' top goals include increasing collaboration with industry and spinning out more companies from Cornell engineering research.

Fostering a more entrepreneurial mindset also will help a hard-hit region. "Cornell has the gravitas to be able to create the Silicon Valley of the East," Collins says. "To me, you can't talk about economic development of upstate New York and leave Cornell out. Cornell has to be one of the drivers."

When it was announced that Lance Collins would be the college's new leader, no mention was made of the fact that he would be Cornell's first African-American dean.

"We've changed so much that I think it's interesting how little was made of that," he says. "My community hasn't lost sight of it by any means. I've been contacted by the scientific African-American community in huge numbers. But ethnic firsts are far less newsworthy these days, which I think, in a way, is maybe the greatest statement that we really are making important strides on the historical racial problems. However, we will know for certain that these problems are behind us when we look at our demographics at all levels -- faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students -- and see that it mirrors the society at large. In this respect, we still have a lot more work ahead of us."

Robert Emro is assistant director of communications and media relations with the College of Engineering. This article is condensed from the fall 2010 issue of Cornell Engineering Magazine.