Dr. Lev Kaplan Appointed as the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Dean Rajan of the Tulane School of Science and Engineering (SSE) is delighted to announce that Professor Lev Kaplan, Ph.D., has been appointed Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, effective March 1, 2025. In this new role, Dr. Kaplan will support faculty across the entire career cycle, from hiring outstanding faculty to advance our strategic goals, to participating in the tenure and promotion processes, to ensuring faculty have the resources they need for successful research and teaching. He will also oversee SSE facilities and IT efforts to improve faculty support and will work to ensure the success of the Dean’s 1,000 Day Plan, a bold vision to grow capacity in key science and engineering research areas where Tulane can excel. Dean Rajan sees the SSE dean’s office as a collaborative place, and he expects the associate deans to work together in areas of overlap. Dr. Kaplan aims to further strengthen the connections between research, academic programs, and outreach to the local community.
Dr. Kaplan’s duties will include overseeing the key responsibilities of faculty lifecycle management, faculty development and onboarding, strategic planning and performance tracking, oversight of IT and facilities operations, space allocations and improvements, resource acquisition and cost-sharing initiatives, along with faculty and staff recognition and awards. “Throughout Lev’s tenure at Tulane, he has been committed to cross-disciplinary collaboration, most notably through the development of several new academic programs,” states Dean Rajan. “These include the undergraduate Engineering Physics program and related certificates, as well as the graduate-level Materials Physics and Engineering Ph.D. program and the Materials Science and Engineering M.S. program.”
Dr. Kaplan has been funded by the National Science Foundation and has published over 75 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Quantum mechanics and wave transport are two of the unifying themes in Professor Kaplan’s work. Recent research interests in his group range from Casimir energy in nanosystems to quantum information, from quantum metrology to quantum chaos, and from quantum transport in photosynthetic systems to the statistics of extreme ocean waves. He has also contributed significantly to faculty hiring and evaluation processes, drawing on experience gained from his two three-year terms on the SSE Promotion and Tenure Committee.
Dr. Kaplan joined the Physics Faculty at Tulane University in 2003 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010 and Full Professor in 2013. From 2011 to 2014, he served as Associate Chair for Academics in the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics at Tulane, and subsequently from 2014 to 2020 he served as department chair. With a background in pure science and extensive experience leading initiatives that bring scientists and engineers together, Dr. Kaplan has served as primary advisor for the Engineering Physics program since its inception. He also serves in the University Senate (an elected body that includes faculty, staff, and graduate and undergraduate students, which meets monthly and discusses issues that affect the university as a whole — he is one of five senators representing the SSE). Furthermore, Dr. Kaplan's dedication to teaching at Tulane has earned him the Weiss Presidential Fellowship for Undergraduate Teaching and the Graduate Studies Student Association Award for Teaching Excellence.
Known for forward-thinking leadership, Dr. Kaplan is also collaborating on establishing a Tulane Center of Excellence—specifically, the proposed Tulane Quantum Information Science and Technology Center—which will bring together investigators from multiple SSE departments and the School of Medicine. The program will start in July 2025, pending this month’s approval. Dr. Kaplan would be a co-director of the center.
Born in Riga, Latvia, Dr. Kaplan earned a B.A. degree in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University in 1996, specializing in particle theory. Subsequently, he served as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and as national Institute for Nuclear Theory Fellow at the University of Washington. The School of Science & Engineering is looking forward to Dr. Kaplan’s continued leadership!
