Fotis Sotiropoulos

Fotis Sotiropoulos is a Greek-born American engineering professor and university administrator known for his research contributions in computational fluid dynamics for river hydrodynamics, renewable energy, biomedical and biological applications. He currently serves as the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs of Virginia Commonwealth University,^[1] a position he has held since August 1, 2021. He was appointed executive vice president and provost at Pennsylvania State University effective August 11, 2025.^[2]

Fotis Sotiropoulos
Born	August 30, 1963
Nationality	Greek-American
Known for	Computational fluid dynamics for fluid structure interaction, river hydromechanics and morphodynamics, wind and tidal energy systems, aquatic swimming and heart valve hemodynamics
Title	Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
Academic background
Alma mater	National Technical University of Athens (BA) Pennsylvania State University (MS) University of Cincinnati (PhD)
Academic work
Institutions	Virginia Commonwealth University, Stony Brook University, University of Minnesota, Georgia Institute of Technology
Website	https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rfF1324AAAAJ&hl=en

Biography

Born and raised in Athens, Greece, Sotiropoulos earned his Diploma in mechanical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece (1986). In 1987 he moved to the United States to pursue his graduate studies. He received a M.S. degree in aerospace engineering from the Pennsylvania State University (1989) and a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics from the University of Cincinnati (1991). From 1991 to 1995 he was a postdoctoral associate and assistant research scientist at the University of Iowa Institute for Hydraulic Research in Iowa City, IA.

Career

Fotis Sotiropoulos serves as the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs of Virginia Commonwealth University, where he also holds a tenure appointment as professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering. Prior to that, Sotiropoulos served as the Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University from October 15, 2015 to June 30, 2021. From October 2020 to March 2021 he also served as Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Stony Brook University. Sotiropoulos was also SUNY Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at Stony Brook University.^[3] Prior to that, Sotiropoulos served as the director of the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory,^[4] the founding director of the EOLOS wind energy research field station,^[5] and the James L. Record Professor of Civil, Environmental and Geo-Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (2006–2015). Prior to that, he was on the faculty of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a joint appointment in the G. W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering (1995–2005).^[6]

Administrative leadership

Virginia Commonwealth University (2021–2025)

Sotiropoulos served as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), where he led a comprehensive academic transformation to position the institution as a model for the “University of the Future.” During his tenure:

• VCU reversed a decade-long enrollment decline and achieved growth in key segments, including a 10% increase in freshman enrollment, 86% growth in fully online enrollments, and an 18% increase in international students.
• Sponsored research expenditures grew by 39%, reaching a historic high of $506 million, and VCU rose 29 spots in the U.S. News & World Report national university rankings.
• He launched the One VCU Academic Repositioning initiative, which led to the creation of the School of Life Sciences and Sustainability, the Academy for Interdisciplinary Innovation at University College, and the formation of the VCU Convergence Labs to advance university-wide transdisiplinary research partnerships.
• Sotiropoulos led the introduction of institution-wide curricular innovations in artificial intelligence, including general education courses, interdisciplinary minors, and data science programs aimed at ensuring AI literacy for all students.
• He championed transformative learning through project-based and research-focused experiences for undergraduates and led the establishment of university-wide Vertically Integrated Projects (VIPs).
• He strengthened global engagement through international recruitment and partnerships and led the successful renegotiation of VCU’s 10-year agreement with the Qatar Foundation.
• Sotiropoulos institutionalized a culture of inclusive excellence and accountability, appointing several senior leaders, establishing performance goals for academic deans, and instituting a highly competitive monetary award for nationally and internationally recognized faculty scholars.

Stony Brook University (2015–2021)

At Stony Brook University, Sotiropoulos served as Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) from 2015 to 2021 and as Interim Provost from 2020 to 2021. His key accomplishments include:

• Increasing CEAS research expenditures by 67% and raising research productivity per faculty by 70%.
• Improving the college's four-year graduation rate by 34% and undergraduate SAT scores by 82 points.
• Leading strategic planning efforts and launching new initiatives in AI, sustainable energy, and engineering-driven medicine.
• Creating the Institute for AI-Driven Discovery and Innovation and the Institute for Engineering-Driven Medicine.
• Establishing the CEAS Vertically Integrated Projects focusing on bringing together students from engineering, the humanities, the arts, business, medicine and many other disciplines across the university to advance multi-year, multidisciplinary experiential learning.
• Hiring a diverse group of tenure-track faculty members and restructuring the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program.
• Expanding philanthropic fundraising tenfold and securing over $25 million in donations, including a major gift from John Hennessy, Chair of Alphabet Inc.
• As Interim Provost, he led the university’s academic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, launched the Academic Program Incubator, and developed new initiatives in curricular innovation and faculty hiring.

University of Minnesota – St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (2006–2015)

From 2006 to 2015, Sotiropoulos served as Director of the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (SAFL), a nationally recognized interdisciplinary research center at the University of Minnesota. His leadership achievements include:

• Growing the lab’s annual research expenditures from $0.5 million to $6 million.
• Leading a $17.8 million renovation of the SAFL facility, funded through a combination of NSF grants and state appropriations.
• Founding the EOLOS Wind Energy Research Consortium and constructing a $5.5 million field research station with a 2.5 MW wind turbine and meteorological tower.
• Establishing SAFL as a national leader in marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) energy research through strategic investments in simulation-based engineering and experimental facilities.
• Creating the StreamLabs research program focused on river and stream restoration, integrating advanced numerical modeling with laboratory and field studies.
• Institutionalizing interdisciplinary collaboration across departments and developing new incentive structures and governance models to support SAFL’s transformation into a college-wide research center.

Awards

2023: American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Fluids Engineering Award “For outstanding contributions to fluids engineering in the areas of turbulence, vortex dynamics, flow-structure interactions, and chaotic dynamics impacting the fields of mechanical, biological, biomedical, and civil engineering.”

2019: American Geophysical Union Hydrology Days Borland Lecture in Hydraulics^[7][8]

2018: Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)^[9]

2017: State University of New York Distinguished Professor^[10]

2017: American Society of Civil Engineers Hunter-Rouse Hydraulic Engineering Award “For generating a quantum leap forward in the development and application of computational fluid dynamics for waterways.”^[11][12]

2014: Sackler Distinguished Lecturer, The Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel^[13]

2011: APS/DF Gallery of Fluid Motion Contest Winner (with T. Le, D. Coffey, and D. Keefe), American Physical Society, 64st APS/DFD meeting, Baltimore, Maryland. Video entry: “Vortex formation and instability in the left ventricle”^[14]

2009: Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS): “For seminal contributions in vortex dynamics, flow-structure interactions, and chaotic dynamics in civil, mechanical and biomedical applications.”^[15]

2009: APS/DFD Gallery of Fluid Motion Contest Winner (with I. Borazjani), American Physical Society, 61st APS/DFD meeting, San Antonio, Texas. Video entry: “Why don't mackerels swim like eels? The role of form and kinematics on the hydrodynamics of undulatory swimming”^[16]

2008: James L. Record Professorship, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota

1999: Early CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation

Research

Sotiropoulos has made seminal contributions in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), spanning a broad range of topics in turbulence, vortex dynamics, flow-structure interactions, and chaotic dynamics. His work has been inherently interdisciplinary and impacted numerous fields in civil engineering, mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, and aquatic biology. He has developed the Curvilinear Immersed Boundary method^[17] for solving the Navier-Stokes equations in domains with arbitrarily complex deformable objects with fluid-structure interaction. His numerical methods have been integrated with novel experiments to enable high-fidelity numerical simulations of real-life fluid mechanics problems in areas such as wind^[18][19] and tidal energy systems,^[20][21][22] river hydromechanics and morphodynamics,^[23][24] fish swimming,^[25][26] and hemodynamics of native and prosthetic heart valves.^[27] Sotiropoulos is the developer of the open source Virtual Flow Simulator (VFS) CFD code,^[28] which is used by industry to optimize wind farms^[29][30] and tidal energy projects^[20] and assess and mitigate the risk of extreme river flooding on transportation infrastructure.^[31]