CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Charles F. Zukoski, professor and head of the chemical engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been chosen to be the next vice chancellor for research of the Urbana campus.
The appointment, effective Aug. 21, was approved today by the executive committee of the university’s Board of Trustees. Zukoski succeeds Paul W. Bohn, who has served as interim vice chancellor since Aug. 21, 2001, when Tony G. Waldrop resigned as vice chancellor. Bohn will return to the faculty in the department of chemistry.
Under Zukoski, the role of the vice chancellor for research will be enhanced, said Nancy Cantor, the chancellor of the Urbana campus.
She said she expects the vice chancellors leadership role to increase in external relations with corporate, state and federal sponsors and research partners; international and national consortia on research and education; integration of research and educational opportunities for undergraduate as well as graduate students; strategic visions for cross-campus research initiatives; and support of interdisciplinary research for centers and institutes (including those reporting to the vice chancellor, such as the Post Genomic Institute and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and those that currently do not, such as the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities).
“Charles Zukoski is an outstanding teacher, researcher and administrator with recognized stature in the research community,” Cantor said. “The vice chancellor must be a distinguished researcher who is widely knowledgeable about academic and research opportunities and can thus provide strong leadership in a variety of areas. I am confident that Charles will excel in the expanded role we have outlined for the vice chancellor for research.”
Cantor also thanked Bohn, the interim vice chancellor, for “having done a remarkable job.”
“We all owe him a debt of gratitude for his dedicated and unselfish service at a critical time,” Cantor said.
Zukoski joined the Illinois faculty in 1985, after earning a doctorate in chemical engineering from Princeton University. He earned a bachelors degree in 1977 from Reed College, Portland, Ore.
He will continue to hold the rank of professor in the department of chemical engineering. He also is a research professor in the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory.
Among his many awards, Zukoski received the Ralph K. Iler Award for the Chemistry of Colloidal Materials from the American Chemical Society, and the Moulton Medal from the Institute of Chemical Engineers. He is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Materials Research Society, the Society of Rheology, and the American Ceramic Society.
