Thursday, Oct. 3, College Provost Peggy Agouris announced Douglas “Doug” Schmidt ’84, M.A. ’86 as the inaugural dean of the School of Computing, Data Sciences and Physics.
This new school has been in development for more than two years, and in November 2023, the College’s Board of Visitors voted unanimously to approve the administrative structure.
Schmidt’s experiences include serving as the director of Operational Test and Evaluation for the U.S. Department of Defense and over two decades as a faculty member at Vanderbilt University, where he served as associate provost, associate chair of the computer science department and co-director of the Data Science Institute.
President Joe Biden nominated Schmidt to his DoD role in 2023. There, he serves as the senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense on operational and live fire tests and evaluation of Department of Defense weapon systems.
“Doug is a force of nature, bringing to William & Mary more than thirty years of experience as an internationally recognized computing expert,” Agouris wrote in an email to the College community.
Apart from his first two degrees from the College, he also earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Irvine.
The new school is slated to open in fall of 2025.