Dr. Rafael E. Landaeta is the Founding Dean of the Mayfield College of Engineering. He is a professor in the Mechanical, Environmental, and Civil Engineering Department. He holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and an M.S. in Engineering Management from the University of Central Florida, as well as, a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UNITEC, Venezuela.

His professional achievements have been recognized with teaching awards, service awards, and industry engagement awards. The American Society for Engineering Management elected him Fellow in 2014. He serves as an Associate Editor for the Engineering Management Journal, has been certified by the Project Management Institute with a PMP and by the Scrum Alliance with a CSM, has written close to 100 technical manuscripts, and have participated in 25 projects with over $4.3M of funding including NSF, NASA, ONR, US Army TRADOC, US Army Corps of Engineers. His scholarship focuses on the continuous improvement of knowledge-intensive project-based organizations, including agility, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He has provided engineering management coaching, training, and consulting to Fortune 100 companies and large US government organizations. He has supervised 17 PhD students. As an administrator, he focuses on supporting faculty and staff with a nurturing environment, while providing the highest educational value to engineering students, and the highest partnership value to other colleges, academic institutions, and industry. Dean Landaeta’s main goal is to facilitate student success. He and his wife Eglee have one son and three daughters.