Dean of the Graduate School

Dr. Dominick Casadonte serves as Interim Dean of the Graduate School.  He is Minnie Stevens Piper Professor and Immediate Past Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Texas Tech University.  After receiving an undergraduate degree in Chemistry with Honors from Case Institute of Technology of Case Western Reserve University in 1977, Dr. Casadonte earned an M.S. degree (Physical Chemistry) and Ph.D. (Inorganic Chemistry) from Purdue University in 1985.  He then did postdoctoral work at the University of Illinois.  In 1988, Dr. Casadonte was awarded one of the first ten Scholar/Fellow Fellowships given by the Dreyfus Foundation.  He began his academic career at Texas Tech University in the fall of 1989.

Dr. Casadonte's research focuses on the use and development of high-intensity ultrasound and ultrasonic instrumentation for nanomaterials fabrication and environmental remediation, as well as supramolecular photochemistry and the design of photoactive metallopolymers. He has more than 150 research publications and presentations from his time at Texas Tech, and is currently Principal Investigator or co- Principal Investigator on research and outreach grants worth 8.5 million dollars.  In the fall of 2000, Dr. Casadonte was a named a Fulbright Scholar to France, where he worked on environmental remediation using high-intensity ultrasound and in the development of power-modulated sonochemistry.  That same year he was named the Alpha Phi Foundation International Professor of the Year. In 2001 he was designated a Minnie Stevens Piper Professor by the State of Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and received the first Chancellor's Council Distinguished Teaching Award for the entire Texas Tech System.  Dr. Casadonte has received every major teaching award offered at Texas Tech University.  In 2002 he received his third American Chemical Society CHEMLUMINARY award for his outreach efforts in chemistry.  In 2004 he was named National Advisor of the Year by Mortar Board, Inc. and became Chair of the Texas Tech Teaching Academy.  He has been listed multiple times in Who's Who Among America's Teachers.  Dr. Casadonte was named one of the first three Discovery Corps Fellows by the National Science Foundation in 2004 for a project entitled Project SERVE (Science Enrichment Using Retired Volunteer Educators).  He was Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry from 2005 – 2010.  He is the North American Journal Editor for Ultrasonics: Sonochemistry (Elsevier), and has been on the Board of Advisors for McGraw-Hill Co., for Chemistry: The Molecular Nature of Matter and Change (Silberberg).  He is a member of the American Chemical Society (Divisions of Inorganic Chemistry and Chemical Education), the Inter-American Photochemical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry Sonochemical Subject Group, the European Sonochemical Society, Phi Lambda Upsilon, Mortar Board, Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi, and Phi Kappa Phi.