Pamela Bhatti has been appointed as the associate chair for faculty development in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), effective January 1, 2025. She succeeds Professor Doug Blough in this position. 

"I am thrilled to take on this new position and continue to work with the amazing faculty in ECE," Bhatti said. " Their dedication and creativity are a tremendous asset to our School and I am delighted to support their professional growth and development." 

As the associate chair for faculty development, Bhatti will lead the School’s reappointment, promotion, tenure, and post-tenure processes. The position also works collaboratively with the director of faculty evaluation and recognition. 

Bhatti, a professor who joined ECE in 2007, previously served as the associate chair for strategic initiatives and innovation from 2019-2024. In that role, she supported faculty entrepreneurship, the MSECE entrepreneurship course (ECE 6001), and managed programs for the School’s many corporate partners. 

She is renowned for her research on biomedical sensors and subsystems, focusing on cochlear and vestibular neural prostheses and improving coronary artery imaging. She advises both ECE and biomedical engineering graduate students and has mentored postdoctoral trainees and residents at the Emory School of Medicine and Georgia Regents University in Augusta.

In 2022, she joined the Executive Leadership in Academic Technology, Engineering and Science (ELATES) program at Drexel University, an intensive national program aimed at helping women in STEM fields elevate their leadership skills and effectiveness. 

Bhatti has had a successful career in industry and entrepreneurship, including co-founding a company based on her research in detecting wrong-patient errors in radiology. She also worked in embedded systems software development at Microware Corporation, local operating network applications at Motorola Semiconductor, and research and fabrication of controlled-release drug delivery systems at Alza Corporation. 

Her entrepreneurial work extends to students, having coached more than 50 student startup teams and another 30 clinical and translational researcher teams in a National Institutes of Health commercialization accelerator. 

She received her B.S. degree in bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley, her M.S. degree in electrical engineering (biorobotics) from the University of Washington, Seattle, and her Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering (MEMS) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Additionally, she earned an M.S. degree in Clinical Research from Emory University in 2013 and has served as the Georgia Tech co-director for the KL2 and TL1 training programs sponsored by the Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance (CTSA). Notably, she was the first KL2 scholar from Georgia Tech. 

Bhatti has served as the editor-in-chief of the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine and has been recognized with numerous research and teaching awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, the NSF Mid-Career Advancement Award, and Georgia Tech's Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award.