We write to share news that Vice Chancellor for Research Scott Brandt has announced he will return to the faculty, effective July 16.
Scott, a professor of computer science and engineering in UCSC's Baskin School of Engineering and the Sage Weil Presidential Chair for Open Source Software, has led our Office of Research since 2013. The office helps power our entire research enterprise, and Scott has helped lead UCSC to new heights in research.
He led the development of our Silicon Valley Campus and helped steer our research operation through two unprecedented and overlapping crises – the COVID-19 pandemic and the CZU Lightning Complex wildfires, which spurred the first-ever emergency evacuation of our campus. He was instrumental in the creation of our Colligan Clinical Diagnostics Lab and helped foster our collaboration with the county to provide COVID-19 testing to community partners.
In his eight years as vice chancellor, Scott worked to transform the Office of Research into a proactive research-support unit. He created the Industry Alliances and Technology Commercialization unit to support campus business engagement, innovation and entrepreneurship efforts, pushing research patent and licensing activity to all-time highs and creating new paths for campus innovators and entrepreneurs looking to bring their products into the marketplace. It also laid the foundation for our recently established IBE Hub.
His creation of a Research Development unit to support faculty in their efforts to secure research funding coupled with new seed-funding initiatives helped grow our campus contracts and grants by more than 50 percent over the past three years.
We are deeply appreciative of Scott’s leadership in support of our research enterprise and wish him well as he returns to the faculty.
We are pleased to share that John MacMillan, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research Development, has agreed to serve as the interim Vice Chancellor for Research, and we look forward to working with John to support research on our campus. The details and timeline for the recruitment of a permanent replacement are still being finalized.
Sincerely,
Cindy and Lori
