UT Austin Picks Mumbai-Born Scientist to Lead Its Nursing School

The University of Texas at Austin has appointed Dr. Kavita Radhakrishnan, a Mumbai born engineer turned nurse scientist, as Interim Dean of its School of Nursing — a remarkable story of reinvention that began with a chance encounter at a Boston hospital.​

Radhakrishnan holds a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering from the University of Mumbai and a master's in electrical engineering from UT Arlington. While job hunting in Boston, she volunteered at a hospital and was struck not just by the depth of nursing's analytical demands, but by a glaring gap: the technology nurses needed to deliver better patient care simply did not exist. "If I wanted to create tools that truly addressed the needs of nurses and patients," she later recalled, "I had to become a nurse myself."​

She returned to school, earned a PhD in nursing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and joined UT Austin's faculty in 2012. Over 14 years she rose through multiple leadership roles, including Associate Dean for Research, while building a nationally recognised research programme using digital tools to help older adults manage chronic diseases and age independently at home.

In 2025, she was inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Researcher Hall of Fame. She is also a Fellow of both the American Academy of Nursing and the American Heart Association.