Leadership

Dr. Andrei E. Ruckenstein

Vice President and Associate Provost for Research

Andrei Ruckenstein joined Boston University in June, 2007 as Vice President and Associate Provost for Research and Professor of Physics. After receiving a PhD in Physics from Cornell and spending two years in the Theoretical Physics group at AT&T Bell Laboratories he held faculty positions in Physics at the University of California, San Diego, and Rutgers University. At Rutgers he was the founding Director of BioMaPS, a University-wide initiative focused on interdisciplinary research in Biology at the Interface with the Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and the first Director of the associated BioMaPS Graduate Program. He also served as Director of the Superconductivity Summer School at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, and as President of the Aspen Center for Physics where he was elected as an honorary life-time trustee. He is the co-founder of the Aspen Science Center, a non-profit organization promoting K-12 science education and the public understanding of science. He also the Chairman of the Executive Committee and the first President of the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, Inc., a collaboration between Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, UMass, the State of Massachusetts, and Cisco and EMC.

Dr. Ruckenstein is a theoretical condensed matter physicist by training, whose research interests focused primarily on the study of collective effects in atomic gases at low temperature, and the physics of strongly correlated many-body systems, with application to low dimensional semiconductors, heavy fermions, and non-Fermi liquid behavior and superconductivity of the oxide high temperature superconductors. A decade ago his research direction shifted from theoretical condensed matter physics to Biological Physics, an area that would be more appropriately described as “Biology from a Physicist’s Perspective.” His biology research has been concerned with understanding the mechanisms governing the behavior of RNA polymerase, the molecular motor that transcribes the genetic information encoded in DNA into RNA. He is the recipient of a Sloan Fellowship, an ONR Young Investigator Award, and a Senior Humboldt Prize, and he is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Cara Ellis Mccarthy

Assistant VP for Research Initiatives

Cara Ellis McCarthy was appointed the Assistant Vice President for Research Initiatives in April 2010.  In this capacity, Ms. McCarthy works with the Vice President and Associate Provost for Research to support the research community and facilitate research initiatives at Boston University.  She also provides administrative and financial oversight to 16 interdisciplinary centers, institutes and programs reporting to the Office of Research as well as the University’s strategic research partnership with the University of Warwick.  She formerly held two positions at Boston University as the Director of Academic Services in the Office of the Provost from 1996 – 2000 and the Director of Administration and Finance for the Danielsen Institute from 2000 – 2010.  Ms. McCarthy earned her B.A. in Political Science from Boston University.

Office Address
Office of the Vice President and Associate Provost for Research
One Silber Way, 8th Floor
Boston, MA 02215
Tel: 617-353-2595
Fax: 617-353-6580