Umesh K. Mishra is an academic and an entrepreneur. In March, 2023, after 33 years on the faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, he was named the next Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also chief technical officer of the gallium-nitride electronics company Transphorm. After earning a Ph.D. at Cornell University for research on gallium-arsenide devices, he had an epiphany. “I realized that the fundamental physics of microwave devices could be applied to power devices,” he says. “And that the impact on the world, and climate, would be much bigger.” Mishra is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Among his honors are the IEEE’s David Sarnoff Award and Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal.