Vice President & Associate Provost for Research
From Dr. Jean Morrison, University Provost and Chief Academic Officer
I write to inform you that Professor Andrei Ruckenstein has decided to step down from his role as Boston University’s Vice President & Associate Provost for Research at the end of this academic year. He will return to research and teaching in the Department of Physics in the College of Arts & Sciences following a sabbatical leave. I know that I speak for all members of our academic community when I acknowledge Andrei’s many significant accomplishments in his administrative leadership role, and I look forward to his continued contributions to Boston University as a member of our faculty.
Andrei is the first person to have served as Vice President & Associate Provost for Research at Boston University, and he has held this position since June 2007. During these six years, he has fostered and promoted the growth of excellence in research at Boston University.
Among Andrei’s numerous accomplishments, he has been instrumental in the identification and removal of administrative barriers to collaboration between the Medical and Charles River campuses. He provided essential leadership in the launch of the Center for Neuroscience and the Graduate Program in Neuroscience—our first University-wide PhD program that does not require tuition transfers across our two campuses. In addition, Andrei has shepherded the development of a number of important interdisciplinary initiatives in the physical, life, and social sciences including the Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering; the Center for Cloud Innovation; the Center for Finance, Law & Policy; and the Nanomedicine Program. As the founding president for the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC), Andrei led BU’s involvement in the establishment of this historic collaboration with Harvard, MIT, Northeastern University, UMass, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and industry partners, CISCO and EMC. In this capacity, he promoted multi-institutional collaborations in cyber-security, cloud computing, materials design, and education—efforts that strengthen and highlight BU’s activities in all of these areas and also allow us to reach far beyond what we could have accomplished on our own.
The growth and evolution of BU’s national research presence during the six years of Andrei’s leadership can be gleaned from our acclaimed Research magazine, which has advanced from a simple presentation of sponsored science and engineering research projects into a crucial window into the enormous breadth and depth of Boston University’s innovative scholarship and research across all disciplines, including the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
While he will be returning to our Physics faculty, President Brown and I have asked Andrei to consider using part of his sabbatical leave to help lead conversations among faculty in the area of systems biology, with the goal of developing consensus around possible next steps for developing this critically important area of biological research and in which Boston University has the potential to make significant contributions.
Please join me in expressing sincere appreciation to Andrei for his many important contributions to Boston University over the last six years.
Over the next three weeks, I will consult broadly within the University to identify a successor. The Vice President & Associate Provost for Research serves a crucial role in overseeing the research enterprise, helping to catalyze initiatives across campus, and serves as a member of the Provost’s Cabinet. If you would like to nominate an individual to be considered for this position or would like to be considered yourself, please send a nomination or expression of interest via email to me at provost@bu.edu. Alternatively, please send nominations or letters of interest in writing to me at the Office of the Provost. Please mark the envelope ‘Confidential’ if you would like your correspondence to be held in confidence. President Brown and I expect to identify and name a successor before the end of the academic year.
As Boston University continues to advance as a highly competitive research university in an evolving climate that includes uncertainty about the levels of federal support for research, we must all redouble our efforts to ensure the vibrancy and effectiveness of our research enterprise. I look forward to working together to ensure the strength of all our research activities.