Professor Arthur B. Ellis is Provost of City University of Hong Kong, commencing 20 September 2010.
Prior to joining CityU, Professor Ellis was Distinguished Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). During his tenure at UCSD from 2006 to 2010, he strengthened the campus’s infrastructure for research and helped increase extramural funding by approximately 40%, to more than US $1 billion annually. Initiatives sponsored by his office included the development of umbrella core facilities, expansion of undergraduate research opportunities, revitalization of interdisciplinary organized research units, and creation of new global partnerships. Professor Ellis helped launch campus-wide initiatives in sustainability and stem cell research. He led the campus’s strategic planning exercise for research cyber-infrastructure (RCI) and co-organized a University of California-wide RCI initiative.
From 2002-2006, Professor Ellis served as the director of the Division of Chemistry at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). While at NSF, Professor Ellis and his colleagues developed programs to better integrate education and research; to pursue large-scale efforts in interdisciplinary fields like energy and catalysis; to broaden participation of underserved segments of the chemistry community to enhance diversity; and to promote bilateral international collaborations for the U.S. chemistry research community.
Prior to joining NSF, Professor Ellis was Meloche-Bascom Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At Madison, Professor Ellis taught thousands of undergraduates, and mentored more than 50 Ph.D. students and dozens of masters students, postdoctoral scholars, undergraduates, and pre-college co-workers. He and his colleagues published approximately 200 research papers in leading scientific journals and obtained nine patents. Professor Ellis chaired UW-Madison’s materials science program, served on and chaired its physical sciences divisional committee that made recommendations on promotion and tenure cases and on course changes, and served on the steering committee for the campus’s reaccreditation from 1997-99.
Professor Ellis received his PhD degree in chemistry in 1977 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his BS degree in chemistry in 1973 from the California Institute of Technology. Among Professor Ellis’s honors are one of the inaugural NSF Director’s Distinguished Teaching Scholar Awards for his contributions to teaching and research; an NSF Director’s Meritorious Service Award for his work as a division director; and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Professor Ellis’s scholarly contributions have focused on interdisciplinary fields such as solar energy conversion, chemical sensors, and smart materials. He and his co-workers have also created a suite of instructional materials – kits, software, demonstrations, laboratory experiments, and websites – based on cutting-edge research in materials science and nanotechnology.
