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Biographic Information

Patrick Barry Butler, Ph.D.
Professor and Dean
College of Engineering
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa

Barry Butler is Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and Dean of the College of Engineering at The University of Iowa. Dean Butler earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in aeronautical engineering in 1979 and 1981, respectively. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 1984, also from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Butler joined The University of Iowa faculty in 1984 as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and subsequently progressed to the rank of professor. During his twenty-three years in academia, he has supervised twenty five undergraduate students on research projects, advised or co-advised sixteen master’s students and eight doctoral students, and has taught thirteen different thermal science engineering courses. Before entering administration in 1998, Butler served as a member of The University of Iowa’s Faculty Senate and Faculty Council.

In addition to serving as Dean for the past seven years, Butler has been chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Associate Dean for Academic Programs, and Interim Dean. During his tenure as Dean, the College has experienced growth in undergraduate enrollment, external research funding, and private support for faculty development, programmatic initiatives and student scholarships. As a result of a new curriculum that allows for a broader engineering education, over half of the College’s graduates now supplement their engineering degree with a minor, second major or certificate. To better prepare graduates for success in the global economy, Butler established the Hanson Center for Technical Communication, a resource center devoted to improving the oral and written communication skills of engineering students, initiated the “Grabbing the Globe” lecture series to promote global awareness, and developed and implemented Virtual International Project Teams, an inter-institutional program that partners Iowa’s engineering students with students from other countries on global design projects. As an active participant in Eastern Iowa’s Corridor STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Initiative, he has been a strong advocate for working with industry, community colleges and Iowa’s K-12 educators to promote STEM education. Over the past seven years, Dean Butler has presented to two dozen different civic groups throughout Iowa.

Dr. Butler is active in a number of aerospace-related instructional and research activities at the University of Iowa, where he also serves as campus coordinator of the Iowa Space Grant Consortium, an organization with 20 years of continuous support from NASA. His research is in the area of reactive flow analysis and modeling. Recently, he has researched supersonic, multi-component reactive flow with specific applications in the area of thermal spray coating of micron-sized particles on metallic substrates. In addition, for the past decade he has worked closely with research engineers in the automotive industry, to develop advanced computer models for use in the design, development and analysis of occupant restraint gas generators. These analyses include real-gas thermodynamics and elementary combustion kinetics characteristic of the unique high-pressure environment of gas generators used to activate occupant restraint systems. He has experience working as a visiting research fellow for the U.S. Navy and Sandia National Laboratories and as a visiting faculty member at Universite de Provence in Marseille, France. He has periodically engaged in professional consulting with Combustion Sciences Incorporated, Princeton Combustion Research Laboratories, Iowa Public Defenders Office, TRW Vehicle Safety Systems, Automotive Systems Laboratory, Battelle Memorial Institute, and Praxair Surface Technologies.

In 2002 he was honored as an outstanding alumnus of the Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In addition, the Society of Automotive Engineers named him a recipient of the Ralph Teetor National Educator Award, and the Iowa student chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers named him as the Outstanding Professor. Butler currently serves on the Boards of several state and national technology-based organizations committed to economic growth and advancing science, technology, engineering and math education. Butler also serves as Governor Culver’s Delegate to the Aerospace States Association.

As a student, he volunteered as a youth basketball coach, and at the UIUC Rehabilitation-Education Center as a reader/recorder of technical books and legal briefs for visually impaired students. Butler also has volunteered at the Wesley House Free Lunch Program, as a youth soccer and basketball coach in Iowa City, and served as a volunteer member of the Iowa City Eels Swim Club Board of Trustees.

The University of Iowa College of Engineering