Shayla Sawyer Armand

Dr. Shayla Sawyer Armand joins Olin College of Engineering as Provost in May 2026.

Armand comes to Olin from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where she is a deeply respected educator, researcher and academic leader. Her work reflects a rare combination of technical rigor and expansive curiosity and she is widely recognized for an innovative, student-centered approach that blends structured learning with open-ended design practice.

Armand’s research focuses on designing and integrating hybrid nano-bio materials to create high-performance devices and sensors that translate complex, often qualitative phenomena into precise, quantitative measurements. Backed by cross-disciplinary collaborations spanning fields from social science and ecology to astrobiology, chemical engineering, analytical chemistry, and semiconductor fabrication, Armand's expansive approach has produced more than 50 publications and led to her first patent, awarded in 2024.

Armand is widely recognized for her distinctive teaching style and for developing the Alpha-Omega Lab model, which she was inspired to develop after participating in Olin’s Summer Institute in 2019. She received RPI’s 2025 Outstanding Teaching Award for Innovation in Education and selected by students for the 2023 David M. Darrin ’40 Counseling Award, and most recently, received the 2026 Constellation Prize for sparking meaningful cultural change and reinvigorating RPI’s 200-year tradition of student-centered, hands-on learning.

As ABET coordinator for RPI’s 2025 accreditation process, Armand's leadership was praised by both ABET reviewers and the School of Engineering for its sustainable, systematic and data-driven approach, paired with an authentic, narrative-based writing style.

In Fall 2022, Armand became the inaugural Director of the Douglas A. Mercer ’77 Innovation and Exploration Laboratory (Mercer XLab) at RPI, a “third place” for hands-on learning and collaboration that was designed through ideation with students and then reopened in Fall 2024. As an open-access hub, the XLab offers electronic instrumentation and components—from foundational to cutting-edge—along with student-led technical support, research opportunities, industry workshops, and curated learning modules. The space is built to foster a growing learning ecosystem where students can develop ideas, collaborate across disciplines, share tools and amplify the impact of their work.

Armand obtained her PhD in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at the age of 24. As a graduate student, she received the highly competitive Department of Homeland Security Fellowship. She completed her undergraduate studies with an electrical engineering degree from Hampton University as a Merit Scholar, Honors College member and two-time MEAC champion basketball player. Throughout her education she worked in industry over the summers, including GE Rail, GE Healthcare, GE R&D and a small government lab, National Security Technologies. She and her husband have two sons, and their musical household influences her approach to teaching, learning and research.

Read the announcement.