Dr. Kurt H. Becker Appointed as Associate Provost for Research and Technology Initiatives and Dean of Sciences and Arts

Polytechnic University is pleased to announce that Dr. Kurt H. Becker has joined Poly as Associate Provost for Research and Technology Initiatives and Dean of Sciences and Arts. Becker has held tenured faculty positions at Lehigh University, the City College of CUNY, and most recently at Stevens Institute of Technology. At Stevens, Becker was the Head of the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics since 2000 and since 2003, he was also Associate Director of the Center for Environmental Systems (CES), a joint center between the Schools of Engineering and Science.

Becker’s background is in atomic, chemical, and plasma physics. He holds a PhD degree from the Universitaet Saarbruecken in Germany. Becker is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has worked extensively on experimental and theoretical studies of electron-driven processes and on low-temperature plasmas. He has published more than 180 peer-reviewed articles and edited or co-edited seven books.


Becker’s research has been funded by the NSF, DOE, NASA, ARO, AFOSR, ONR, DARPA, and through contracts from industry. He has also served on numerous review panels for federal funding agencies such as NSF, DOE, and NASA. Becker holds seven patents on the generation and maintenance of atmospheric-pressure plasmas and their application (six of those patents are joint patents with Provost Erich E. Kunhardt). In 2001, Becker was a co-recipient (with Erich Kunhardt) of the Thomas A. Edison Patent Award of the Research and Development Council of New Jersey.