Marc P. Christensen
Marc P. Christensen is an American engineer and academic who served as the 17th president of Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. He held the office from July 1, 2022, to July 22, 2024, and was succeeded by acting president David K. Heacock. He previously served as president after Anthony G. Collins.
Born in 1971, Christensen earned a B.S. in engineering physics from Cornell University and an M.S. in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from George Mason University. His doctoral thesis was “Multi-chip global free-space optical interconnections: Scaling, embedding, design, and implementation” (2001) under advisor Michael W. Haney. He is married to Seema Christensen and lives in Potsdam, New York.
Early in his career, DARPA named him a rising star in microsystems research. He worked as a technical leader in BDM’s Sensors and Photonics Group (now part of Northrop Grumman Mission Systems), contributing to optical signal processing, VCSEL-based interconnections, and infrared sensor modeling. In 1997 he co-founded Applied Photonics, which provided hardware demonstrations for DARPA programs.
In 2002 he joined Southern Methodist University (SMU), where he was department chair of Electrical Engineering from 2007 to 2012 and then Dean of the Lyle School of Engineering from 2012 to 2022. He received the Gerald J. Ford Research Fellowship (2008), was named the inaugural Bobby B. Lyle Professor of Engineering Innovation (2010), and won the Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor Award (2011). Christensen holds ten U.S. patents and is recognized for his work in photonics.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 12:44 (CET).