Louis Padulo is President Emeritus of the University City Science Center (UCSC), where he served as President and Chief Executive Officer since 1991, following a year's appointment as visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to that, Dr. Padulo was President of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He was a Visiting Professor in the Media Lab at MIT and at the University of Tokyo before joining UAH. Previously Padulo spent thirteen years as Dean of the College of Engineering at Boston University and, in his last year, as Associate Vice President. During his tenure at Boston University he was also a professor of mathematics and of engineering, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Technology, Strategy and Policy. Preceding Boston, Dr. Padulo served on the faculty of Stanford University for seven years, having formerly taught for nine years at Morehouse, Harvard, Columbia, Georgia State and San Jose State universities. Dr. Padulo has worked as a computer scientist for IBM, a design engineer for RCA, a systems analyst for the Mitre Corporation, and as a consultant for numerous national and international organizations. The author of two books and several articles, Padulo earned his doctorate at Georgia Institute of Technology, his master's degree from Stanford University, and his bachelor's degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University, all in electrical engineering.
Padulo has served as chairman of several regional and national committees, such as the Committee on Minorities in Engineering, the National Planning Commission for Expanding Minority Opportunities in Engineering, and the Committee on Women and Minorities. A lifetime member of the NAACP and a Fellow of both the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Padulo is president of the Congress of Higher Education which represents eighty-three colleges and universities in the greater Philadelphia region. Dr. Padulo has also served on numerous boards, including LibertyNet, Fairleigh Dickinson University, the United Negro College Fund Advisory Board, International House of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Education Fund, the Ben Franklin Technology Center of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the Presbyterian Foundation for Philadelphia (formerly Presbyterian Hospital) and the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Dr. Padulo has been honored with several awards for Excellence in Teaching and has been recognized for his work on behalf of minorities and women. Dr. Padulo was presented with the Reginald H. Jones Distinguished Service Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Minority Engineering Effort by the General Electric Foundation and NACME, and the Vincent Bendix Minorities in Engineering Award by ASEE. Padulo also directed two National Science Foundation sponsored programs which he created: Computational Research in Mathematics (at Morehouse College), and the Late Entry Accelerated Program (LEAP, at Boston University). Initially funded to help women with weak science or math backgrounds return to school to earn master's degrees in computer fields, LEAP was expanded to include men when it became financially self-sufficient.
Dr. Padulo is married to Katharine Seamans Padulo and has two grown sons, Robert and Joseph.