DURHAM – Ken Gall has been appointed Duke Engineering’s first associate dean for entrepreneurship, effective June 1, 2019. This new position will help the school live out the fundamental Duke value of “knowledge in service to society” through a dedicated focus on helping our faculty, staff and students positively impact the world through their work, beyond the school’s current strengths in pursuing rigorous scholarship and generating new knowledge.

In his new role, Gall will work alongside Bill Walker, the Mattson Family Director of Engineering Entrepreneurship, and Executive-in-Residence Steve McClelland, and in collaboration with the Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, to accelerate and execute on an exciting vision for entrepreneurship based in Duke Engineering.

Specifically, the team will work across curricular and co-curricular programs to help Duke Engineering faculty and students expand the reach of their work through the process of investigating, designing and delivering solutions to societal needs.

“Ken, Bill and Steve will work in concert with and build upon the great ongoing work of our engineering design education ‘dream team’ of Ann Saterbak, Eric Richardson, Joe Knight, Paul Fearis and several other faculty in all of our departments to help faculty, graduate students and undergraduates deliver their design innovations to the wider community and industry, whether through project-specific partnerships or the founding of new ventures,” said Ravi Bellamkonda, Vinik Dean of the Pratt School of Engineering.

In addition, Gall will lead a new Founder’s Track within the Master of Engineering Management program, which begins this fall.

A Duke staff veteran, entrepreneur

Since he arrived at Duke in 2015, Gall has served as chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (MEMS) at Duke. He will continue as a professor in MEMS as well as associate director for Duke MEDx, a joint initiative between engineering and medicine to facilitate the development and translation of innovations for human health.

A successful entrepreneur himself, Gall has launched five medical device companies—including Restor3D and Deep Blue Medical Advances, both Duke startups incubated in the BRiDGE. Two of his startups have been acquired by large public medical device companies, while the remaining are in full operation. He is also deeply committed to supporting students interested in design and entrepreneurship, and recently mentored a student team in the school’s First-Year Design course whose project now has a patent pending.

“I am excited to have someone of Ken’s depth and breadth of experience help realize our vision for entrepreneurship across the school as associate dean,” said Bellamkonda. “With the amazing team we now have in place, I believe we have an unparalleled opportunity to build a leading program that inspires and equips our students and faculty to become founders of initiatives, partnerships, technologies and companies that deploy solutions to societal challenges.”

(C) Duke University