Vicki Chandler. Photo by Margaret Hartshorn, Biomedical Communications.
UA Plant Scientist Chandler to Head IBSB
By UA News Services
May 24, 2004
Vicki L. Chandler has been named director of the Institute for Biomedical Science and Biotechnology (IBSB), Provost George Davis and Richard C. Powell, vice president for research, announced.
Chandler, a Regents’ Professor in UA's department of plant sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, has been serving as interim co-director of IBSB since 2002.
“Vicki is an outstanding teacher and mentor,” Davis and Powell wrote. “She is very active on many university committees and in professional service. She is a co-inventor on two patents and is the author of more than 80 research articles.”
The goal of IBSB, the UA’s premiere project in the field of biomedical science and biotechnology, is to stimulate interdisciplinary collaborations throughout all areas of science and medicine that involve genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics.
“I think we have some key faculty on board now who will allow us to create some powerful research networks, groups that will do great stuff,” Chandler said.
The research coordinated and stimulated by IBSB will be an important factor in the University of Arizona’s implementation of the state’s bioscience roadmap.
The institute's main offices and laboratories will be housed in the new Thomas W. Keating BioResearch Building, although IBSB programs will take place throughout the entire campus. IBSB receives state funding from Proposition 301 money and additional money from an endowment.
“The University conducted an extensive national search for the position of director of IBSB. Vicki Chandler was chosen from a field of outstanding applicants because of her outstanding professional accomplishments and her proven leadership abilities in interdisciplinary collaborations,” Powell and Davis wrote. “We are pleased to have someone of her scientific stature as the director of IBSB. Please join us in congratulating Vicki and supporting her as director of the Institute for Biomedical Science and Technology.”
“An important factor in establishing our research focus will be the Battelle Arizona Biosciences Roadmap and the UA’s Life Sciences Focused Excellence Study Team report,” she said. “What are the specific areas that we will tackle? One high priority, I believe, must be biostatistics and bioinformatics.”
In addition to her duties as director of IBSB, she will continue to serve as a professor in the department of plant sciences.
She received her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and her doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California in San Francisco. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University before joining the faculty at the University of Oregon.
Since 1997, she has been a professor in the department of plant sciences and in the department of molecular and cellular biology at the UA, as well as a member of UA's Interdisciplinary Program in Genetics.
Her research provides insights into how genes are turned on and off, which scientists call the regulation of gene expression, by seeing how such genetic systems operate in maize. She has significant funding from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
She has received numerous honors and awards including a Presidential Young Investigator Award and an NSF Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers.
She was given the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Research of the Year Award in 2001, and elevated to the rank of Regents Professor in 2003. Her outstanding research work was recognized in 2002 by her election to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors a U.S. scientist or engineer can achieve.
- Updated: May 24, 2004
