Renowned physicist named dean of Case Western Reserve University College of Arts and Sciences

CLEVELAND, Nov. 18—Case Western Reserve University President Eric W. Kaler and Provost Joy K. Ward announced today that David Gerdes, a renowned physics scholar and department chair from University of Michigan, will become dean of the College of Arts and Sciences on March 1.

Gerdes, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Physics and a professor of astronomy, has served on the University of Michigan faculty since 1998 and as chair of the physics department since 2019. He also serves as chair of the Michigan Society of Fellows, which promotes interdisciplinary scholarship across the university.

During his tenure as department chair, Gerdes has focused on recruiting and promoting faculty, modernizing and enhancing the curriculum, increasing donor support, expanding research opportunities for undergraduates, and strengthening the department’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. In addition, he recently worked closely with the leadership of University of Michigan’s research division, College of Engineering, and College of Literature, Science and the Arts to establish an interdisciplinary Quantum Research Institute, which has received $36 million in university funding so far.

“The College of Arts and Sciences is a core piece of the Case Western Reserve experience, and it demands an exceptional leader,” said President Eric W. Kaler. “I am eager to support David as he works to bolster the impressive breadth of education, research, scholarship and creative endeavors taking place across the college.”

Gerdes has earned the University of Michigan’s highest awards for excellence in undergraduate teaching and is especially known for his inclusion of undergraduate students in his renowned research.

For the past decade, Gerdes has researched small-body populations throughout the solar system, with an emphasis on Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids and the region beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt. He and his team use machine learning to extract very distant, faint, moving objects from images acquired from large telescopes—leading to the discovery of hundreds of new solar system objects. He discovered the possible dwarf planet 2014 UZ224, nicknamed DeeDee, which at the time of its discovery was the second-most-distant known object in the solar system, and he is the namesake of asteroid 208117 Davidgerdes. Gerdes began his career as a high-energy physicist and contributed to the discovery of the top quark, the heaviest known elementary particle, for which he was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

“David’s scholarship is impressive,” said Provost Joy K. Ward, referencing Gerdes’ decades of funded research and more than 560 journal articles. “But his leadership skills, commitment to the student experience, and dedication to the wide range of studies across the College of Arts and Sciences are even more remarkable.”

President Kaler and Provost Ward expressed their gratitude to Deputy Provost Lee Thompson and Professor Peter Whiting, who both served in interim dean positions as a national search was conducted.

“Their selfless leadership has kept the college steady during this time of transition, and undoubtedly will help set David up for success,” President Kaler said.

For Gerdes, his arrival at Case Western Reserve is also a return home: He grew up in Hudson, Ohio, the birthplace of Western Reserve College. It’s part of the reason he was drawn to the role, but it was the university’s reputation—and college’s in particular—that enticed him most.

“In my own field of physics, the Michelson-Morley experiment, which was carried out on this campus in 1887, still stands as perhaps the most important null result in the history of science by failing to detect any variation in the speed of light,” Gerdes said. “This tradition continues today. When I visited the campus, I was tremendously impressed by the energy and enthusiasm of everyone I met, and their deep shared commitment to the institution’s success.”

Gerdes noted the sense of momentum on campus, including the construction of the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building, the transformational gifts to the university, and the relationships among the college, other schools and the Cleveland community.

“The core mission of a liberal arts college—to explore fearlessly, to deepen our understanding of the human and natural world, to pursue the common good, to practice inclusive excellence in our research and teaching, and to train the next generation of thoughtful, engaged citizens—is critical,” Gerdes said. “I’ll be a passionate advocate for this mission across the full breadth of the college and beyond.”

Gerdes earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Carleton College (where he also ran track and cross country), a master’s degree in applied mathematics and theoretical physics from Cambridge University, and a PhD in experimental high-energy physics at University of Chicago.