Bioengineering professor and chair shows how creative practice can sustain balance and inspire scientific discovery
Delphine Dean serves as the chair of the Department of Bioengineering, but when she’s away from the office, she likes to dance ballet.
She said she wants her dancing to show students that there is more to faculty members than what they see in the classroom and lab. She also hopes faculty in her department take away a message about work-life balance.
“I enjoy dance; it’s a good break,” she said. “I get a lot of friends asking, ‘Isn’t it a big time commitment?’ But it’s funny because sometimes they run marathons, and it’s the same kind of time commitment.”
Dean said she danced through high school and then through college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She picked it back up after joining Clemson University as an assistant professor, taking classes through Foothills Conservatory for the Performing Arts. For the past 15 years, she’s taken part in the conservatory’s annual production of The Nutcracker at the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts.
“It is really stunning to be in the presence of someone who not only is that skilled on stage but also so successful academically.”
David Munteanu M ’20, Ph.D. ’26
Dean’s work as a bioengineer and her passion for dance sometimes merge. A team of students in a past Creative Inquiry course placed sensors inside ballet pointe shoes to measure factors such as pressure and muscle activity. As both an engineer and dancer, Dean uniquely appreciates the evolution of materials used in pointe shoes.
“One of the things that I’ve enjoyed watching as an engineer is that these types of technologies mean that anybody can go up en pointe and actually be good and dance the way they want to,” Dean said. “I feel like when I was younger, if you didn’t have the right feet for the shoes, then that was it; they didn’t make the shoes.”
David Munteanu, a Ph.D. candidate in biological sciences, said he first came to know Dean as a dancer and later learned that his advisor, Richard Blob, had co-authored a paper with her.
“I don’t know how she gets this skill while also being so busy,” Munteanu said. “She is an amazing dancer and actress as well, so it is really stunning to be in the presence of someone who not only is that skilled on stage but also so successful academically.”
Offstage, Dean has led and played key roles in several noteworthy programs since joining Clemson in 2007, including the University’s COVID-19 testing lab and working with students to develop medical devices for rural villages in Tanzania. She holds the Ron and Jane Lindsay Family Innovation Professorship and won Clemson’s Class of ’39 Award in 2020.
It just goes to show Dean is not only en pointe on the stage but also on point in the classroom and lab.
