Garrett, Jr.

James Garrett is provost of Carnegie Mellon University. He received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in civil and environmental engineering from Carnegie Mellon. He has made significant contributions to bring advances in computing, IT, artificial intelligence, and sensing into infrastructure construction and management.

He also is a pioneer in neural network and sensor-driven decision support. Prior to his selection as provost of Carnegie Mellon, he served as dean of the College of Engineering and as head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. While serving as dean, he used his extensive international networking skills to integrate research and teaching across engineering science, the arts, and business. His influence had an impact on campuses from Kigali, Rwanda, to Silicon Valley, CA.

James also is faculty co‐director of the Smart Infrastructure Institute, a research center aimed at developing sensing technology for construction and infrastructure systems. He led the creation of the Advanced Infrastructure Systems graduate program, the first of its kind, and educated students on topics relating to sensing technologies, data modeling and analytics, AI, and systems development projects of infrastructure applications. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.