Linda P.B. Katehi

Linda Pisti Basile Katehi-Tseregounis (born January 30, 1954) is a Greek-born American engineering professor and former university administrator. Katehi was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to three-dimensional integrated circuits and on-wafer packaging and to engineering education. Katehi worked as the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's provost from 2006 to 2009 and dean of engineering at Purdue University from 2002 to 2006. Beginning in 2009, she served as the sixth chancellor of the University of California, Davis.

On April 27, 2016, University of California President Janet Napolitano removed Katehi from her post and placed her on paid administrative leave pending an investigation into possible violations of university policies over nepotism. On August 9, 2016, the UC President announced that she had accepted Katehi's resignation after the investigation found "numerous instances where Chancellor Katehi was not candid, that she exercised poor judgment, and violated multiple University policies." Katehi remained in her post as electrical engineering professor. Since fall 2019, Katehi has served as a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University.

Early life and education

Katehi was born in Athens and grew up on Salamis Island in Greece. After graduating from high school, Katehi was admitted to the National Technical University of Athens.

In 1977, Katehi graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. She was one of the two women in her class of 189 students and has stated that this led to many difficulties and biases against her during that time. She has spoken publicly about this experience: "Engineering has always been a field where not too many women go. When I was an undergrad, there were only two women in a class of 189 in electrical and mechanical engineering. Only two." Katehi has stated that this motivated her to mentor women and other underrepresented minorities pursuing careers in engineering and the sciences.

Katehi has stated that she was drawn to electrical engineering as a teenager in 1969, when she watched Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 Moon landing. While captivated by the astronauts, she was most inspired by the engineers in mission control on Earth. She went on to earn her master's degree and doctorate in electrical engineering at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 1981 and 1984, respectively.

In her early US career, Katehi worked at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor from 1984 to 2001 as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and as associate dean of academic affairs and graduate education starting in 1994. She was hired as the engineering dean at Purdue University in 2002. While there, she increased both the faculty by 15% and research funding within the engineering department. After four years at the University of Illinois, Katehi became the 6th Chancellor of the University of California, Davis in 2009, succeeding Larry Vanderhoef. She was the first female chancellor of the university. Through her academic roles she has been a mentor to over 70 postdoctoral fellows.

In addition to her university roles, Katehi was appointed by President George W. Bush to the committee on the National Medal of Science. She was appointed to the FBI's National Security Higher Education Advisory Board in 2010. Katehi is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in 2011, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Funding for this work has come from BAE Systems, the State of Texas, and Texas A&M University's Targeted Proposal Teams initiative.

Technology transfer and entrepreneurship

In December 1994, while at the University of Michigan, Katehi co-founded EMAG Technologies, Inc., located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The company was established to commercialize her research in high-frequency circuit and antenna modeling using fast multiresolution-based computational methods. Katehi retained an ownership interest in the company throughout her subsequent academic positions.

Board memberships

Member of the Board of textbook publisher John Wiley & Sons Member of the Board of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation Member of the Board of The Cyprus Institute Member of the Board of Valley Vision Member of the Board of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute Member of the Board of the Business Higher Education Forum

University of California, Davis

Katehi was appointed chancellor by the University of California Board of Regents on May 7, 2009, effective August 17, 2009. She holds UC Davis faculty appointments in electrical and computer engineering and in women and gender studies. She also launched several blue ribbon committees: tech transfer and commercialization, research, information technology excellence, and organizational excellence. Katehi also created the Chancellor's Colloquium Distinguished Speaker Series. As of 2009, Katehi's base annual salary was $400,000.

In response to demonstrations on campus in 2010, Katehi launched the Hate-Free Campus Initiative to reaffirm the campus's values and commitment to one another. The initiative included creation of "Beyond Tolerance Tuesday," collaboration with the Museum of Tolerance, and the creation of a speakers series and the Civility Project, which began with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Under Katehi's leadership, UC Davis co-hosted the Governors' Global Climate Summit 3: Building the Green Economy in November 2010. Participants included Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the United Nations Development Programme, and the United Nations Environment Programme.

In 2013, Katehi launched the UC Davis World Food Center. In January 2015, she announced that UC Davis planned to build a new location for the World Food Center in downtown Sacramento, which could also serve as a satellite campus. In September 2014, Katehi announced a partnership between Mars, Incorporated and UC Davis to create the Innovation Institute for Food and Health. Mars pledged to contribute $40 million to the project over 10 years while UC Davis committed to contribute $20 million over 10 years. Additionally, Katehi announced a partnership with a government agency in Chile to expand research on a global level in conjunction with the UC Davis World Food Center.

Days after the announcement of the Mars partnership, Katehi and UC Davis announced the installation of a solar array on 70 acres of land south of Interstate 80, providing 14 percent of all UC Davis's power consumption, built in conjunction with SunPower.

Increasing the percentage of Latino students at UC Davis was stated as a goal, with UC Davis aiming to become a Hispanic Serving Institution by having at least 25% of their undergraduate student body made up of Latinos by the 2018–2019 school year.

In March 2015, Katehi invited the public to participate in the construction of the Shrem Museum in UC Davis's Gateway District by signing a steel beam to be installed and visible after construction. Upon completion, the museum houses the UC Davis art collection consisting of over 5,000 items.

Research

Intelligent RF electronics and neuromorphic computing

Katehi's most recent research centers on the design and development of intelligent edge RF electronics, with emphasis on co-designing analog hardware and artificial intelligence algorithms for neuromorphic computations using analog memory. real-time signal processing using fused neural networks on a memristor-based system-on-chip (Science Advances, Vol. 11, Issue 30, July 2025), and a cognitive radio receiver using analog in-memory processing (under review at Nature Computational Science).

In April 2025, Katehi received seed funding from Texas A&M's Targeted Proposal Teams initiative for the project "Rapid Design and Optimization of Memristors Using Digital Twin and Additive Manufacturing Technologies," undertaken with co-investigators from the Departments of Engineering and Performance, Visualization, and Fine Arts. A related 2021 paper in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces demonstrated S-to-X-Band stretchable inductors and filters for gigahertz soft and epidermal electronics.

Involvement in STEM

In August 2011, Katehi voiced her support of the California STEM Learning Network in her Huffington Post blog. The California STEM Learning Network, otherwise known as CLSNet, started in 2008 with funding provided by the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In September 2012, Katehi was awarded a $3.725 million grant over 5 years from the National Science Foundation to establish an ADVANCE program at UC Davis, with the goal of increasing female participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and careers. Katehi serves as the principal investigator and chairs the project's steering committee. The grant money was used in part to create the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Science (CAMPOS), The Network recognized Katehi for her work in increasing STEM opportunities for women and girls and serving as a role model in the field.

In March 2013, Katehi was chosen to speak at the 26th annual Yolo County Women's History Month luncheon.

Women in engineering advocacy

Throughout her career Katehi has been a prominent advocate for women and underrepresented minorities in engineering and STEM. She served as President of the US Women Engineering Proactive Network (WEPAN) from 2016 to 2019 and as President of the Engineering Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) from 2017 to 2018.

In 2014, she received an honorary degree from the American College of Greece as part of their annual commencement ceremony.

Simon Ramo Founders Award

In 2015, the National Academy of Engineering presented Linda Katehi with its Simon Ramo Founders Award, established in 1965, recognizing her "For visionary leadership in engineering research, entrepreneurship, and education, and for national advocacy of higher education as a major driver of the U.S. economy." When Katehi received it in October 2015, she became the first woman ever to receive the award in its fifty-year history. Her Google Scholar profile lists more than 19,700 citations.

Memoir

In 2022, Katehi published a memoir, Higher Ground (Amplify Publishing, ), reflecting on her career in engineering and academic leadership, including her experiences as a woman in a male-dominated field and the controversies surrounding her chancellorship at UC Davis. The memoir recounts her journey from Salamis Island, Greece, to the chancellorship of one of America's top public universities, addressing themes of gender bias, leadership, mentorship, and resilience in higher education. That was confirmed by the findings described in the report published by the investigative committee.

In August 2015, a federal judge allowed a spoliation of evidence claim to proceed against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in an action associated with the resignation of the Chancellor. Rather than litigating the claim, the University of Illinois settled the action at a cost of more than $2 million.

UC Davis pepper-spray incident

On November 18, 2011, Katehi requested Occupy movement protesters on the UC Davis campus to remove their tents from the quad. When the group of peaceful protesters refused to move, campus police officers pepper-sprayed them while they sat on the ground, linking arms. Eleven protesters received medical treatment; two were hospitalized.

The incident received national and international media attention. Footage captured on mobile phones circulated widely online and became a prominent symbol of the national Occupy movement. Katehi described the video images as "chilling" in a public statement. She subsequently appeared before more than 1,000 students on the campus quad to apologize publicly, saying "I am here to apologize. I feel horrible for what happened."

Katehi stated there had been "no option" except police action due to health and safety concerns, participation of some non-UC Davis persons in the protests, and some protestors' non-compliance with Katehi's earlier written and police's oral directions. The incident led to further protests and calls for Katehi's resignation from some campus departments and organizations. UC Davis Academic Senate Chair Linda Bisson criticized Katehi's slow response in providing information and taking disciplinary action against police, but said most faculty wanted Katehi to stay in her post while being held accountable in some way. An online petition asking her to resign gathered upwards of 100,000 signatures.

Katehi said she took "full responsibility for the incident" and placed two officers and the chief of campus police on administrative leave. Katehi stated that she would not step down, and she and State Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez requested an outside investigation. Mark G. Yudof appointed former Los Angeles Police Department Chief William J. Bratton to head the investigation. The Reynoso Task Force Report published in April 2012 reported that Katehi "failed to express in any meaningful way her expectation that the police operation was to be sharply limited so that no use of force would be employed by police officers other than their demand that the tents be taken down." On July 31, 2012, a UC Davis spokesman announced that John Pike, a police officer who pepper-sprayed students, was no longer employed by the university.

After the incident, UC Davis's Office of Strategic Communications budget was increased from $2.93 million in 2009 to $5.47 million in 2015. University records show the university paid at least $175,000 to a Maryland-based public relations firm to suppress online search results about the pepper spray incident. Despite this effort, searching "UC Davis pepper spray" on Google continued to return approximately 100,000 results at the time of reporting. On August 9, 2016, it was further reported that Katehi had once asked an aide to edit her Wikipedia page to protect her reputation. An independent investigation found that following the pepper-spray incident, Katehi hired a public relations firm primarily to improve her personal narrative and online identity through her Wikipedia page, for which the firm was paid $44,600.

EMAG Technologies — conflict of interest

UC records disclosed during the investigation into Katehi's chancellorship revealed that she had retained a financial interest in EMAG Technologies, the Ann Arbor company she co-founded in 1994. She reported receiving $103,000 from the firm in 2012 and $25,000 in 2013, while simultaneously serving as UC Davis Chancellor. Senior counsel for the Center for Public Interest Law described this as a potential conflict of interest for a public university administrator.

Conflict of interest in board memberships

During her tenure as chancellor of UC Davis, Katehi became embroiled in controversy over her service on outside boards of directors. In March 2016, Katehi apologized for these activities. She later apologized for the DeVry board membership, calling it an error, and promised to donate $200,000 of her Wiley stock proceeds, out of the $420,000 compensation for serving on their board, to an undergraduate scholarship fund at UC Davis. Several members of the California State Assembly, unsatisfied with her response, called for her resignation, while others remained neutral.

UC President Janet Napolitano called the DeVry board membership "a mistake," but said she did not consider it a ground for Katehi's resignation at the time.

On April 1, 2016, hundreds of students walked out of classes and, with faculty, protested and called for the resignation of Katehi in a press conference. Protesters stated Katehi represented the "corporatization and privatization of the university," and that she had "failed to properly address racial and religious tensions on campus."

DeVry Education Group: Katehi faced criticism for her decision to join the board of the DeVry Education Group, a for-profit education corporation, at a time when DeVry was the subject of a federal investigation for misleading advertising practices.

John Wiley and Sons: Katehi also served on the board of the textbook publisher John Wiley and Sons, which has been criticized for the high cost of textbooks, and which has a direct interest in the textbook choices made by UC Davis. She received $420,000 (in pay and stock) from Wiley and Sons as compensation for her services from 2012 to 2014. She cited correcting "the chronic lack of diversity on a number of boards" as a reason to join those boards. She served on this board with permission from the University of California. In March 2016, Katehi said that she would donate all stock proceeds earned while serving on Wiley's board to a UC Davis scholarship fund.

Administrative leave and resignation

On April 27, 2016, UC President Janet Napolitano placed Chancellor Katehi on investigatory administrative leave from her position as chancellor, pending the outcome of an investigation into multiple possible violations of several University of California policies. According to Inside Higher Ed, the final straw was issues related to employing her daughter-in-law. Katehi's daughter-in-law, Emily Prieto-Tseregounis, was hired as an executive analyst at UC Davis in 2013, earning $77,000, and in less than three years was promoted to assistant vice chancellor earning $130,000.

The resignation was also covered by the Associated Press, which reported that doubts about Katehi's honesty — specifically her alleged misrepresentations to UC President Napolitano regarding her knowledge of the PR spending — were a primary factor in the decision. The ethics probe covered nepotism, misuse of student funds, and misleading administrators about her role in the social media scrubbing effort.

On August 9, 2016, the UC President announced that she had accepted Katehi's resignation after the investigation found "numerous instances where Chancellor Katehi was not candid, that she exercised poor judgment, and violated multiple University policies."

Resumption of academic work

In July 2017, the Sacramento Bee reported that Katehi would begin teaching at UC Davis again in the 2017–18 academic year as a "distinguished professor." She would receive a salary equivalent to her salary as chancellor. Public interest experts criticized the move as atypical, noting that Katehi's salary would be higher than any other professor in her department, even those with full teaching loads. UC Davis officials later revealed she would only be teaching one engineering class every academic quarter.