Va. Tech dean grieves for dead colleagues

Posted by Jim Tankersley at 7:25 am CDT

The dean of Virginia Tech's Engineering Science and Mechanics department said in an e-mail this morning that two of the department's professors were among the 31 people killed by a gunman at Norris Hall on Monday.

The dean, Ishwar K. Puri, offered this eulogy of Professors Liviu Librescu - whom students described on Monday as attempting to barricade his classroom door while they jumped from a window to safety - and Kevin Granata. Both, the dean wrote, were killed "while serving Virginia Tech."

Read the dean's remarks:

"Dr. Librescu and Dr. Granata were both world class researchers, excellent teachers, outstanding mentors to doctoral students, and fully involved in outreach to the profession.

"ESM is a unique interdisciplinary department, one of few in the US, and their presence greatly enriched our program. There are few programs in the US that have scholars of their caliber and in their particular disciplines on the same faculty.

"I grieve for them. They will be dearly missed.

"Liviu Librescu was born in Romania but his quest for freedom brought him to the United States.

"He was an exceptionally tolerant man who mentored scholars from all over our troubled world. He wrote many books and monographs, and his scholarly publications in a number of areas are among the most highly cited in the world. His research has enabled better aircraft, superior composite materials, and more robust aerospace structures. He was well known internationally.

"Over the last 10 years, he served as a member of the international advisory board of more than nineteen international conferences.

"Kevin Granata served in the military, and later conducted orthopedic research in medical hospitals. He came to ESM because our interdisciplinary approach to scholarship and learning excited him.

"He had many scholarly interests related to neuromuscular control, to stability as he and his students researched how people walk and run, muscle and reflex response, and robotics. The use of his research by other scholars worldwide had put him on a trajectory to become a notable star in these fields. He was one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the country working on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy.

"I hope that you will write in a manner that honors the memory of my fine deceased colleagues and describes our loss. What a tragedy!"