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News Release

Last modified: Sunday, March 28, 2010

Jorge José named to IU's top research post

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 29, 2010

Bloomington, Ind. -- Indiana University President Michael McRobbie today (March 29) announced the selection of Jorge José as the university's new vice president for research, subject to approval of the IU Board of Trustees. José has been serving as vice president for research at the University at Buffalo, the largest and most comprehensive campus in the 64-member State University of New York (SUNY) system.

José has been in his current role at SUNY Buffalo since 2005. Like IU, SUNY Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities, which comprises the nation's top 60 research universities. He is also a professor of physics and has an appointment in the physiology and biophysics department. Prior to his position at SUNY Buffalo, he was a distinguished professor and chair of the physics department at Northeastern University.

Additionally, he is a fellow in one of the world's most prestigious scientific societies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He becomes the 43rd AAAS fellow at IU.

"Dr. José is a distinguished scientist, accomplished research scholar and skillful administrator who will ensure that Indiana University continues to strengthen its research profile and maximize external funding support for its core research activities in these challenging economic times," McRobbie said. "He has a demonstrated record for growing university research expenditures, establishing new funding opportunities to initiate and enhance research and scholarly efforts, and overseeing compliance with rules and regulations that govern these activities. I am confident that we have found the ideal person to further the great tradition of research excellence at IU."

In fiscal year 2009, Indiana University received $469 million in grants and awards, the third-highest total in university history. During that time, IU researchers submitted nearly 5,000 proposals for sponsored research worth well over a billion dollars.

As vice president for research, José will be responsible for research development, research compliance and research administration at IU. Working with various university offices, campus leadership and deans, he will seek to increase and diversify research and creative works at IU, attract external funding for these activities, and develop public-private partnerships, technology transfer and graduate education opportunities. He will also seek to expand intercampus research.

"I was attracted to this position because of Indiana University's distinguished academic history and reputation for being one of the major research universities in the nation, as well as for its important seminal contributions in research and creative scholarly work, and its teaching and public service," José said. "A wealth of possibilities exists at IU to help catalyze interdisciplinary and disciplinary collaborations, both at the campus level and among campuses at IU. I look forward to joining President McRobbie's leadership team and working with distinguished faculty, students and staff who will help the university achieve the highest order of excellence possible."

IU School of Informatics and Computing Dean Robert B. Schnabel has served as interim vice president for research since July 2009.

"Dr. José will be able to build on a foundation of research success at IU that has been strengthened by Bobby Schnabel, who served as interim vice president while also continuing his responsibilities as informatics dean," McRobbie said. "Bobby has accomplished much in this dual administrative role to develop our research office and to successfully address several difficult issues. He has championed important initiatives to increase women's rates of participation in science, technology, engineering and math disciplines, which will lead to the submission of a major grant proposal to the National Science Foundation. He has also worked to increase the number of interdisciplinary projects in the growing area of health informatics. We are deeply grateful for his service to IU."

José was recommended by a 16-member search committee headed by Distinguished Professor Michael J. Wade, associate vice provost for faculty and academic affairs.

"We are very fortunate to have found such an accomplished administrator who is also an eminent scientist," Wade said.

IU Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs Edwin Marshall added, "Dr. José brings a diverse and international perspective to this critical university function, and I look forward to working with him in exploring new avenues of research and support for advancing academic excellence at Indiana University."

At SUNY Buffalo, José has been responsible for university-industry relations, research funding and compliance, research communications and research support. His administrative portfolio included the management of six campus research centers, as well as the Office of Sponsored Projects Services, the UB Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach, the Division of Comparative Medicine/Laboratory Animal Facility, Institutional Review Boards responsible for both Human and Animal subjects, and VPR Information Systems.

While at SUNY Buffalo, José oversaw the growth of research expenditures at the university from $259 million in 2005 to $350 million in 2009, an increase of more than 35 percent.

Following postdoctoral appointments at Brown University, the University of Chicago and Rutgers University, he was appointed assistant professor of physics at Northeastern University in Boston in 1981. He was promoted to associate professor in 1984 and full professor in 1988. He served as interim chair (2002-04) and chair (2004-05) of the physics department.

While at Northeastern University, José founded the Center for the Interdisciplinary Research on Complex Systems in 1995 and served as the center's director until 2005. The center focuses on fostering collaborative projects among researchers from various scientific and engineering disciplines and enhancing interdisciplinary educational training of both undergraduate and graduate students.

A native of Mexico City, José received his doctorate, as well as master's and bachelor's degrees, in physics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He has been trained as a theoretical condensed matter physicist and has done work in phase transitions, soliton physics, disordered systems, high temperature superconductivity, classical and quantum Josephson junction arrays, quantum and classical chaos, and quantum phase transitions. More recently, he has also done work in biological physics, specifically in computational neuroscience and cell biology.

Elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007, he is the author and co-author of 145 publications, has been a referee for 10 professional national and international journals, and is the co-author of Classical Mechanics: A Contemporary Approach, published in 1998 by Cambridge University Press. He has also given 230 talks in 22 countries.

In 1977, José became the first James Frank Fellow at the James Frank Institute at the University of Chicago and, in 1996, he was named the Matthews Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University. José has also been a visiting professor at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France, and at Saclay in Paris, and he has spent sabbatical leaves at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. Additionally, he has been a yearly visitor and faculty member of the Physics Institute at UNAM and was a visiting scholar for 13 years at the Centro Atómico Bariloche in Argentina.

He was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1997 and a corresponding member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences in 1999. His awards also include France's Chercheur Etranger D'haut niveau et de Renomme International in 2002 and the Manuel Sandoval-Vallarta 2004 Award from the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico.

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