JanetEllzey

About

Janet Ellzey is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and holds the Engineering Foundation Centennial Teaching Fellowship at The University of Texas at Austin. From 2009 to 2017, she was Vice Provost of International Programs. In this position, she managed a staff of more than 150 and a budget of $25M. Prior to joining the Provost’s office in 2009, she developed international programs for the Cockrell School of Engineering as assistant dean for international engineering education. She conducted research in the field of combustion for more than 30 years.

As the first Director of Humanitarian Engineering from 2018-25, she built and led an academic program focused on engineering solutions for low-income or marginalized communities. She launched the Certificate in Humanitarian Engineering in 2017. In 2009 in collaboration with Jim O’Connor in Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, she developed and directed Projects with Underserved Communities, a three-course sequence in which student teams partner with rural communities around the world to build small infrastructure projects such as latrines, community kitchens, and health centers. PUC has completed more than 45 projects in 11 countries. She developed Humanitarian Product Development (HPD), a formal collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in which student teams enroll in a two-course sequence and design products for use in humanitarian response. In 2025, she launched a new partnership with the Kenya Red Cross Society in which a student team led by UT-Austin HPD instructor, Bailey Jones, assesses needs in Kakuma Refugee Camp and then addresses these needs through innovations developed in HPD.

Ellzey has won three President’s Awards for Global Learning (PAGL), a university-wide program to address global challenges. In 2019-20, she led a team of two other faculty and four students that partnered with the Lebanese Red Cross to test a device developed at UT-Austin to fabricate sanitary pads for women in refugee camps. In 2022-23 with Julie Zuniga from the School of Nursing, Ellzey won her second PAGL and led a team of 14 students to develop no-cost interventions to prevent bedsores in patients at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in El Doret Kenya. In 2024-25, she partnered with Farya Phillips to lead a team of 15 students to assess the impact of previous PUC projects in India.

She has held research fellowships in both France and the United Kingdom. In 2018, she was elected as an Inaugural Fellow of the Combustion Institute. She was the Russell Springer Severence Professor at University of California at Berkeley in 2019. During 2020-21 she was a Jefferson Science Fellow at the United States Agency for International Development. 

Educational Qualifications

• Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1985
• M.S., Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, 1980
• B.S., Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, 1978

Select Awards & Honors

• Fellow of the Combustion Institute (2018)
• Academy of Distinguished Alumni, Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering (2011)
• President’s Award for Global Learning – The University of Texas at Austin
• Women in Engineering Student Advocate Award (2005)

Related Websites

• Humanitarian Engineering Program

Select Publications