Dr. Paul Russo

University Vice Provost and Dean, Katz School of Science and Health, with 25 years of experience in founding and scaling mission-aligned, values aligned, academic units, programs, and projects. Skilled at shaping and rethinking visions through collaboration and consensus building. Successful history of identifying and developing synergies with other units and external partners. Demonstrated track record of increasing enrollment, reaching new student markets, and ensuring financial contribution to support vision. Experienced in ensuring academic rigor for graduate, undergraduate, and professional programs—both on campus and online. History of championing faculty initiatives to increase retention and graduation through innovative pedagogies, digital strategies, and academic supports. Also experienced in overseeing accreditation, assessment, and continuous improvement. Uncompromising commitment to delivering excellence, access, and inclusion for diverse groups of traditional and non-traditional students. Strategic planner, results-oriented, and fiscally responsible. Recent scholarship includes uses of AI (LLMs and SLMs) in Smart Health and Sustainable Cities. Other research streams examine user behaviors in social networks by developing and evaluating causal models of online interactions. Studies focus on social sharing in online communities that are influenced by user motivations, trust, and network properties. This computational social science on the web promises to improve artificial intelligence on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google. Earlier projects included mathematical methods such as pattern analysis and machine intelligence for image and video analysis. Other projects have bridged physics and mathematics to identify particles emitted as space shuttle materials degrade. Peer reviewer. Consistent record of successful teaching and student engagement—inside and outside of the classroom.