Shelley Anna, Ph.D.

Shelley Anna became the vice provost for faculty at Carnegie Mellon University on July 1, 2023. In this role, she provides counsel as a senior academic leader overseeing academic policies related to faculty affairs and offering support and resources to faculty and academic administrators across the university. She leads the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty, which oversees a number of important programs, including: faculty appointment, review, retention and promotion; faculty professional development programs; the dual career program; diversity and inclusion programs for faculty; faculty leaves; and Incoming Faculty Orientation. 

Anna joined CMU as a faculty member in 2003 in the College of Engineering (ENG). Prior to becoming vice provost for faculty, she was ENG’s associate dean for faculty and graduate affairs and strategic initiatives. As associate dean, Anna oversaw graduate and faculty affairs and advanced strategic priorities and new initiatives, including co-chairing ENG’s 2023 strategic plan development. In faculty affairs, Dr. Anna worked to ensure an equitable reappointment, promotion and tenure process and navigated the significant and lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on faculty development. Anna, in collaboration with Dr. Alaine Allen, ENG’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, and their counterparts at two other universities, won the National Science Foundation Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate Project ELEVATE grant, which focuses on establishing an inclusive and equitable culture and infrastructure that supports faculty success. 

Among her awards, Anna is the recipient of a 2005 NSF CAREER award, the 2006 George Tallman Ladd Research Award from the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon, and a 2012 Honorable Mention for a Carnegie Science Award in the category of Emerging Female Scientist. She received the Russel V. Trader Career Faculty Fellowship in Mechanical Engineering in 2011. Anna has published several highly cited papers, has had her technologies adopted commercially and is recognized as a fellow of the American Physical Society. 

Anna is a professor of chemical engineering and holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Physics. She received her bachelor’s degree in physics from Carnegie Mellon, and master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering science from Harvard University.