New dean lays out vision for UIC College of Engineering

What attracted Omolola “Lola” Eniola-Adefeso to the University of Illinois Chicago was its unique makeup as a Research 1 institution, its diversity and its location in an urban center.

“You rarely have a top research engineering college that is situated in a top research-intensive university that has the level of diversity of students that UIC has access to,” said the new dean of UIC College of Engineering. She joined the university on Oct. 16.

Throughout her 25-year career, the chemical and biomedical engineer has published over 70 peer-reviewed publications, secured millions of dollars in federal research funding and has a strong track record of adopting an interdisciplinary approach to her work. Her research has resulted in three patent filings, one of which was licensed to a biotech company.

Before joining UIC, she served as a professor of chemical and biomedical engineering and macromolecular science and engineering at the University of Michigan, where she held the Vennema Endowed Professorship. She was named a university diversity and social transformation professor and served as associate dean for graduate and professional education in its College of Engineering.

Eniola-Adefeso grew up in Nigeria. She didn’t know she was born in the United States until it was time to attend college, and her mother presented her with her American passport.

“She said, ‘You’ve got to go home,’” said Eniola-Adefeso.

So at 16, Eniola-Adefeso returned to the United States to attend college, starting at Catonsville Community College in Maryland’s Baltimore County before transferring to the University of Maryland, where she was a Meyerhoff Scholar and studied chemical and biomolecular engineering. She received her doctorate in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Eniola-Adefeso recently spoke with UIC today about her vision for UIC’s engineering college, the importance of interdisciplinary collaborations and what she’s enjoying about Chicago.

How is the UIC College of Engineering positioned to be a leader in the future of engineering, and what is your vision for the college?

Two things that are unique about UIC Engineering are that it is a top research institution, an active Research 1 college situated in an urban center here in Chicago. There aren’t that many top engineering programs in a city. Chicago, the third-largest city in the United States, has a diverse economy. We have access to food, pharmaceutical, energy and environmental industries with which the college can partner in research and education, allowing UIC to lead the future of engineering education and research. So that’s exciting.

UIC engineering is also unique because it’s one of the few top engineering programs with a robust campus behind it, where you have strong schools of public health, pharmacy, medicine, law, and business. Again, engineering can partner with these areas and units to do creative things in research and education. And so those two directions, I think, put this college in an excellent space for engineering education and leadership in teaching and research nationally.

Why are interdisciplinary collaborations important in higher education, specifically in engineering?

The problems of our world and humanity that we must solve in the next decade or two are increasingly complex. Because of that complexity, one discipline is no longer adequate or equipped to tackle those things. Engineering is at the forefront of technological development, which will help. But increasingly, we must engage with the human side of things as we design engineering. What does it mean for us to develop technology?

Understanding the flavor of humans and how all the things they bring will impact how those humans engage with our technology is critical. From that context, more and more, there needs to be a multidisciplinary team approach that includes folks from the sciences and humanities working with our engineers to push that boundary and create technology that is useful for our citizens in the United States and globally.

Can you talk about what initially sparked your interest in bioengineering? 

Growing up, I was always fascinated by how the human body seems to run on autopilot and does so for nearly a century. That is if all goes well, right? And even when things go wrong, there are built-in alert mechanisms that allow external intervention.

I had always been interested in medicine from that context, of a curious young child. I quickly realized that I had a very analytical brain, so basic biology was not something I could sit and focus all my attention on because I always needed to know “why.” And “why” works better for me when there are numbers around it.

That led me to engineering. Then, as I went through my undergraduate education and graduate school, I recognized that the human body is one of the best-engineered machines in the universe and that, as an engineer, there’s a lot I could learn from how the human body functions. With that knowledge, combined with my engineering education, I began to think about ways to engineer external intervention when that human body machine is not working the way it needs to. That brought me to biomedical engineering because it is that discipline that learns to understand life sciences and the human body and uses engineering skill sets to design technology to interface with the human body or technology that can correct deficiencies within the human body.

What attracted you to UIC?  

All those things that I mentioned earlier are the very reasons that I found UIC exciting. But maybe the one thing I had not mentioned before is the diversity of the people. You rarely have a top research engineering college that is situated in a top research-intensive university that has the level of diversity of students that UIC has access to, with upwards of 36% Hispanic students, another 8% African American students, 46% first-generation students, a high number of Asian students. All of what makes the United States of America exists here at UIC, and for me, it is a tremendous opportunity to be part of that ecosystem.

What have you enjoyed most about the UIC campus and Chicago so far?  

For Chicago, it’s the food. I’ve just been so thrilled to engage with the restaurant ecosystem, and this is also a city, depending on where you are, that’s very walkable. I love being able to walk around and see the people and see the culture and the vast diversity in the culture of the city of Chicago, whether it’s Little Italy or Greektown. All those things have been exciting for me to be a part of.

As for the university, I get excited daily from the community here, staff, faculty and students. Their deep passion for UIC has been infectious. It’s just amazing for me to see. Not many top universities have a situation where the people within them are so excited about that university and that college, and that’s what I see here.

What is one surprising thing people may not know about you?  

I am a runner, and in 2019, I ran the Chicago Marathon. I have long admired the city of Chicago since I was a wee undergrad. I’m just thrilled to finally be a part of the city of Chicago and call it my home. That Chicago marathon was my second; the first was the Detroit marathon. I plan to do some form of running. I don’t know if it will be the full marathon, but I am here in the city of Chicago, and I see myself participating in a race moving forward.