At Home in Athens

AT HOME IN ATHENS

After 25 years at Georgia Tech, Alex Orso takes over UGA College of Engineering

DAVID CARAVIELLO

The Gothic churches of northern Italy and the antebellum homes of northeast Georgia are separated by nearly 5,000 miles, but Alessandro Orso was well-positioned to bridge the gap. A childhood building with Lego bricks turned into repairing appliances like irons and clothes dryers. His father, a chemical engineer, always took pleasure in explaining how things worked. Degrees in electrical engineering and computer science followed from the oldest technical university in Milan.

And, inscrutably, it all somehow led to the Peach State. After college, Orso traveled to Georgia Tech for a post-doctorate program that was supposed to last nine months—and he stayed for 25 years. And then on July 1, the computer science expert moved to the other side of that invisible line separating Yellow Jackets from Bulldogs when he officially started in his new position as dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia.

“The fact that I’m a computer science person was probably kind of appealing to the hiring committee, because I bring a different perspective,” said Orso, who goes by Alex. “The way I see it playing out, I’d like for computer science and engineering to be more integrated at UGA. I’m going to look for areas where there can be a tighter collaboration, because nowadays with AI and data science becoming so prevalent, the boundary between computer science and engineering is really disappearing.”

Indeed, Orso is different. At 56 he’s a young and energetic dean at a young and energetic engineering school, with an area of expertise that makes him well-versed on pertinent issues like cybersecurity and AI. And this is hardly a computer scientist who prefers monitors and dark rooms to personal interaction. An avid piano and guitar player, Orso is an enthusiastic conversationalist who began his UGA tenure with a listening tour—visiting with alumni, faculty, students, state legislators and others to get a feel for what the College of Engineering does well and could do better.

He learned that it was enduring some growing pains. While Georgia’s College of Engineering is just 13 years old—a mere babe compared to others like Georgia Tech, whose engineering school dates from 1885—by the fall semester of 2024 it had already grown to UGA’s fourth-largest college, with 3,000 students. And while the students have come, the faculty and infrastructure at the college haven’t necessarily kept pace.

“Right there is a pressure point,” Orso said. “We’re using some of the same processes we were using when we were smaller, and that clearly is reaching the point where we need to change something. “With so many students, classrooms have become an issue. Space for new faculty has become an issue. All those are typical constraints of an entity that’s grown so dramatically as the College of Engineering at UGA.”

No question, Orso has a vision for the UGA College of Engineering, but many of those more immediate issues have to be addressed first. The good news is that he raves about the culture at Georgia, which runs deeply throughout the campus and the city of Athens, and was hailed as a strength by almost everyone he spoke with on his listening tour. And as for elevating a relatively young academic entity into something greater? Well, he has experience doing that from his time wearing white and old gold.

“Everybody involved is passionate,” Orso said. “The students are passionate, the faculty are passionate, the staff are passionate. You really see this when you talk to people in the college. For me, that was a reminder of the way the College of Computing at Georgia Tech was when I was there, because I lived through the whole growth from that being a single entity to having it rise up through the ranks. And really reminded me that kind of a hunger that people have, and how they really want to go and do more, and how they're open to new ideas.”

GROWTH TRAJCTORY

During his more than two decades at Georgia Tech, Orso amassed a distinguished track record that included teaching, research and fundraising. He secured $11 million in philanthropic funding to establish the Scientific Software Engineering Center, which works to improve software development and train new engineers. He successfully advocated for the addition of an online master’s program in computer science. His research attracted funding from the likes of IBM and Microsoft.

“Dr. Orso demonstrates a compelling vision for advancing excellence in the College of Engineering,” S. Jack Hu, UGA’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, said when Orso was selected dean in February. “His deep commitment to instructional innovation and student success, impressive record in research and innovative approaches to building partnerships make him an ideal leader for the next phase of the college.”

Orso will admit, he hears lots of jokes from colleagues in Athens about the fact that he came from Georgia Tech. Were he a football coach, his every move would be scrutinized from Sanford Stadium to Hancock Avenue. But if there is a rivalry between the engineering colleges at UGA and Georgia Tech, Orso believes his background in computer science allows him to remain above the fray.

“I never had to hide it,” he says of his 25 years on Tech Parkway. “If there was a rivalry at some point, now everybody understands and realizes that we're much stronger if we work together. There's more than enough for everybody, so we don't have to necessarily compete for students. “We know that Georgia and the U.S. need more of the engineers we can produce. Really, anything we can do to kind of come together and do more in terms of graduating engineers that satisfy the needs of the workforce is better for Georgia and the U.S.”

In fact, Orso in September was slated to meet with the deans of the other three engineering colleges in the Peach State—at Georgia Tech, Kennesaw State and Georgia Southern—to discuss how could they collaborate in furthering engineering education in Georgia. “On the field, it’s a different story,” Orso said. “But when sports are not involved, I think we can all work together.”

And in fairness, those 25 years at Georgia Tech were what made Orso the researcher and academic leader he is today. When he first joined the institute’s College of Computing, “it was a very different entity,” he said, from the powerhouse program it was when he left. Orso was among those who helped set it on that growth trajectory, an experience similar to what he underwent with the Scientific Software Engineering Center, which he essentially started from scratch.

In 2023, Orso was named interim dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Computing when his predecessor left to become provost at the University of Wisconsin. If there was a singular moment that truly set him on the path from Atlanta to Athens, that was it. “I got the bug,” Orso said. “I realized how much you can do as a dean. To be in a position where you can actually listen to students and faculty members, and observe all these things that you would like to change, that was invigorating. I really loved that aspect of the job.”

Once Georgia Tech selected its full-time dean in the spring of 2024, Orso began to keep an eye out for similar positions. When former UGA College of Engineering dean Donald Leo left to become executive vice president and provost at Ohio University, one of Orso’s mentors at Georgia Tech nominated him for the job. Orso began researching UGA and its College of Engineering, and the more he learned, the more he wanted the position. Even his wife could tell when he returned home from his interview.

“Oh,” she told him, “you liked it.”

Indeed he did, and that feeling has only intensified since Orso officially started on July 1. Yes, as of late summer he was living in a kind of bachelor pad with a treadmill in the garage and his wife and children yet to move over from Atlanta. But he loves the feeling of community that comes with being in a college town, loves UGA’s land-grant mission, loves the breadth of a university that teaches so much beside hard science.

“It was really refreshing to meet with the other deans and not just talk about technical stuff,” he said. “There are philosophers, there are people from the School of Medicine. That was a big motivator, because I’m a big believer in students being exposed to an intellectual diversity. You’re not just talking to engineers, but philosophers or somebody in the veterinary school. I think it results in students being much more well-rounded than they would be otherwise.”

“Let's identify one of the big challenges, ground the challenge into some local problem, and define that as one of the initiatives that we're going to pursue,” he said. “Under that umbrella, we can do a lot of in terms of education and research. We can have like a story that we can tell our donors and so on. So I think at a high level, that’s the right way to go. Identify some big problem, go after this big problem, and become the best at solving this problem.”

Orso’s own background can certainly facilitate in that quest, given how prominent the issues of software reliability and security have become in today’s society. He also wants to integrate AI into the curriculum. “I don't think anybody has figured it out yet, really, so everybody's trying,” he said. “I talk to other deans at other institutions, and they’re experimenting with one thing or another, but still trying to figure out. So I think that can be a distinguishing factor.”

There’s been a lot to take in since he started the job on July 1, and a lot of basic blocking and tackling that has to be undertaken before Orso can truly begin shaping UGA engineering to meet his vision. But no doubt, this former Yellow Jacket is comfortable in his new home. He’s been swept up in what he calls “the love UGA factor,” or the feeling of community so present around campus, showing off his new red and black ties and coffee mugs on LinkedIn. An Italian who grew up near the F1 track in Monza even took a spin in a racecar built by UGA Motorsports.

While they share similar academic missions, Georgia Tech and UGA are as different as the cities they call home—the former was founded as a technology school, the latter as a land-grant college. After so long at one, Orso is relishing his first steps at the other. Working at such a broad-based university has clearly been an invigorating experience so far for the new dean, who believes it helps build more well-rounded engineers in the process.

“Every time I talk to employers, they say one of the things they like is that our students can talk to people. As simple as that might sound, it is the stigma of the engineer of the computer scientists—they're great technically, but they cannot really interact with other people, or they're not as good as they could be interacting with other people. And once upon a time, that was enough,” Orso said.

“Nowadays, more and more I get the feedback that we need engineers who also have to understand the business side of things. Because when you make design decisions, you have to understand there are business implications and cost implications for that. We need engineers to be able to talk to customers, both to understand what they need and to explain what they're planning to do. And I'm always very happy when I hear from employers that they say our students actually fit the bill.”

Orso was even enamored by the wording in UGA’s strategic plan, which states that the university “is committed to the people of the state of Georgia and to addressing the grand challenges of our time on a national and global scale.”

You’d think the new engineering dean had been wearing silver britches all along.

“I love that. It really resonated with me,” he said. “I am not from Georgia, clearly, but I’ve lived almost half of my life here. Serving Georgia and the U.S., it’s the right thing to do, it’s the right mission for a university. There’s such passion around the university, it’s hard to not be affected by it.”