William Ditto (2015-2017)

William Ditto served as dean of the College of Sciences at NC State from September 2015 through November 2017.

Dr. William Ditto came to NCSU from his former position as dean of the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.

“Dr. Ditto is a highly cited physicist and over the course of his career has been a leader in discovery and innovation,” NCSU Provost Warwick Arden said.

Ditto is an expert in nonlinear dynamics and chaotic systems and leads the Applied Chaos Laboratory that has generated recent discoveries in reconfigurable computing, chaotic computing and astrophysics.

“Bringing order out of complexity has been the guiding principle in both my research and administrative endeavors throughout my career,” Ditto said. “I’m excited to bring a spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation to a university that embraces – and celebrates – its think-and-do spirit to provide a world-class education for its students and life-changing research and service for its stakeholders.”

Ditto is recognized internationally for the development a new type of computer based upon nonlinear dynamics and chaos. His findings have been used to study new ways of controlling heart arrhythmias, seizures and epilepsy.

Before his tenure as dean at Hawaii’s flagship university, Ditto served as founding director of Arizona State University’s School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering and was the Olin Chair of Biomedical Engineering. From 2002 to 2009, he served as founding chair for the University of Florida’s biomedical engineering department, which under his leadership became the first named department at the university.

Ditto also served as a founding faculty member of the joint Emory-Georgia Tech biomedical engineering department, and served as a physics professor at both Georgia Tech and the College of Wooster. He started his career as a scientist in the U.S. Department of the Navy.

In recognition of his research achievements, Ditto has been elected a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, among numerous other awards.

Education:
Ditto earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from UCLA in 1980 and his doctorate in physics from Clemson University in 1988.