Kavita Radhakrishnan, an electronics engineer turned nurse-researcher, has become the fifth dean of the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing.
Kavita Radhakrishnan was born and educated first in India, earning an electronics engineering degree from the University of Mumbai before moving to the United States, where she retrained as a nurse and built a research career in technology-assisted care for older adults. She took up the permanent deanship on 1 September, after seven months as interim dean.
Her shift from engineering to nursing began with volunteer work at a hospital in Boston. ‘The technology they needed to support patient care simply wasn’t available or effective,’ she said, recalling the disconnect she observed between medical device engineering and everyday clinical needs. That observation set the direction for a research career built at the intersection of the two fields.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from the University of Mumbai, a master’s in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, and both a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and a PhD in nursing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She joined the UT Austin faculty in 2012 and holds the Laura Lee Blanton Chair in Nursing, moving through the roles of assistant dean for research, associate dean for research, and director of the Luci Baines Johnson and Ian J. Turpin Center for Gerontological Nursing before her appointment as interim dean in March 2026.
Research Built Around Technology and Ageing in Place
Kavita Radhakrishnan’s research applies telemonitoring, connected sensors, digital gaming and artificial intelligence to chronic disease management, with a particular focus on helping older adults with cardiovascular disease manage their condition at home rather than in a clinical setting. She has published more than 65 research articles and secured over $10 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Texas Department of Health and Human Services. In 2025 she was inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, and she holds fellowships with the American Academy of Nursing and the American Heart Association.
Two of her National Institutes of Health-backed trials, funded through the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, centre on sensor-controlled digital games that track heart failure patients’ self-care behaviour through wearable sensors linked to game mechanics. One study enrols 200 heart failure patients across seven southern states, from Texas to Georgia; a parallel project examines how the approach can be culturally adapted with the Lumbee Native American tribe in North Carolina, using community-based participatory methods developed with her collaborator John Lowe, the Joseph Blades Centennial Memorial Professor at the school. ‘We want to see how playing digital health interventions improves health outcomes and quality of life, and most importantly, self-care behaviours,’ Radhakrishnan has said of the research.
Kavita Radhakrishnan’s deanship builds on a run of recent recognition. In August 2025, while serving as associate dean for research, she was named to the Dolores V. Sands Chair in Nursing Research, an endowed position named for the school’s second dean, who led it from 1989 to 2009. Radhakrishnan’s work has been cited in research from more than 30 countries, and she has sat on ten National Institutes of Health study sections reviewing other scientists’ grant applications.
During her seven months as interim dean, Kavita Radhakrishnan raised $5 million in philanthropic support for the school and secured two R01 grants from the National Institute of Nursing Research, according to UT Austin. ‘We are entering a defining era for nursing,’ she said in a statement announcing her permanent appointment. ‘Higher education, health care and technology are transforming at an extraordinary pace, bringing challenges—but also unprecedented opportunities to reimagine how we educate, discover, care and lead.’
UT Austin’s provost, William Inboden, backed the appointment. ‘Dr Radhakrishnan is the right leader for this important moment of growth,’ he said.
On the Nursing Shortage, She Wants the School Better Resourced
In an April 2026 interview shortly after her interim appointment, Kavita Radhakrishnan was blunt about the gap between the school’s output and its resources. ‘We need more visibility to the school officials, because we do great work, [but] our acceptance rate is 2%,’ she said, adding: ‘We need to do more to address the nursing shortage, but we are constrained.’ Her proposed fix centres on formal academic-practice partnerships with hospitals and health systems that could expand clinical training capacity while keeping graduates working in Texas. ‘One of the key strategies would be building an effective academic practice partnership so that we can have those networks,’ she said. ‘We need it to be sustainable at the same time, so that we can provide a pipeline of good workforce for Texas.’
Kavita Radhakrishnan has also pointed to Austin’s expanding medical infrastructure, including the growing Dell Medical School and the planned arrival of a University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center campus, as reasons the nursing school’s role will only grow. ‘They’re just exciting opportunities for us to make an impact and be true partners in the healthcare ecosystem,’ she said. ‘I want to stress that we are here. You can’t have a hospital without us.’
Kavita Radhakrishnan Joins a Short List of UT Austin Nursing Deans
The university has offered nursing instruction since 1960, when faculty were transferred from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, though the School of Nursing was not established as its own school until 1972.
| Dean | Tenure |
|---|---|
| Billye J. Brown | 1972–1989 |
| Dolores V. Sands | 1989–2009 |
| Alexa K. Stuifbergen | 2010–2023 |
| Eun-Ok Im | September 2023 – March 2026 |
| Kavita Radhakrishnan | September 2026 – present (interim from March 2026) |
Kavita Radhakrishnan’s appointment comes at a moment of wider scrutiny over the pathways that bring Indian professionals to the United States, including a proposed $103,265 H-1B visa fee and changes to international student visa rules that have raised concern about the pipeline of Indian researchers into American universities. Her rise to the top of a major nursing school follows other recent diaspora milestones, including Arshdeep Singh Dang’s appointment as the UK’s first Sikh RAF pilot.
Kavita Radhakrishnan takes over a school that has had only five deans in the 54 years since its founding in 1972. She said she plans to spend her first weeks listening before setting a fuller agenda. ‘I am humbled to serve,’ she said. ‘In the weeks ahead, I look forward to meeting with many of my colleagues, listening to their ideas, and learning from the expertise across this remarkable community.’
