Kevin Smith, who in just three years has transformed the UC Davis research infrastructure, will step down on June 30, 2001, from his vice chancellor post.
Appointed vice chancellor for research in July 1997, Smith said his decision was based on a wish to maintain the momentum of his research program in the Department of Chemistry.
"Though it is the Office of Research staff that has needed to handle virtually all of the workload, it has recently become clear to me that, in order to personally keep up with the accelerating demands on the office, I should either curtail my own research program or step down," Smith said. "In very competitive research fields such as mine, ‘stopping research is forever’; one rarely recovers after a hiatus."
"Much has been accomplished during Kevin’s tenure as vice chancellor," said Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey. "He is an exceptionally productive scientist who’s maintained his large research program while shouldering his heavy administrative responsibilities ably and with good humor. We’re all indebted to him for his fine work."
Added Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, "Vice Chancellor Smith is an excellent ‘closer.’ Projects in the works for years, like UC Davis Connect and our Technology Transfer Center finally came to fruition under Kevin."
The vice chancellor’s responsibilities have increased dramatically since he succeeded physics professor Robert Shelton, who resigned from the campus post in fall of 1996 to become vice provost for research for the University of California.
Established several new initiatives
On Smith’s watch, the Office of Research inaugurated a new Technology Transfer Center; UC Davis Connect, a program designed to foster the success of new business ventures in the Sacramento region. In addition, he has been the strategic thinker behind a plan to create an "enterprise campus" within UC Davis.
The "bread and butter" work in his office -- processing contracts and grants -- has also seen a big boost as campus researchers brought in $247 million in extramural funding last year -- a 26 percent increase over the year, the largest such jump among the nine UC campuses.
"And we look as though we will top that by another 15 percent this year," Smith said. "This is a remarkable testament to the quality of our faculty and other researchers. For the first time in history, our campus last year requested more than $1 billion from extramural sources."
Smith is also credited with leading the team that persuaded the federal government to increase UC Davis’ research overhead funding formula by 4 percent over five years, thus bringing more funds for research infrastructure. Mindful of researchers’ needs, he helped reorganize the way the campus uses its share of the overhead to more directly benefit researchers.
Front-line media spokesperson
Smith’s leadership was also called upon last fall when several researchers who work with primates received razor-blade threats and when crops were destroyed by vandals opposed to genetic engineering. He became a front-line media spokesperson, shielding targeted researchers understandably reluctant to invite further risk.
While he has been the top research administrator, Smith has continued to run his lab, recently renewing grants from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health; continuing to publish and attend conferences; and attracting new graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and visiting researchers into his research group.
Smith is an unusually productive scientist, with more than 600 papers in top-quality, refereed journals.
He is the co-inventor on six patents and has written three books. His latest, published in 1999 and co-edited with two others, is a 10-volume 5,000-page (61 chapters) set called The Porphyrin Handbook. It won an international publishing award for the best book in chemistry in 1999 through the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the American Association of Publishers.
He works in the area of biological chemistry with research activities that incorporate areas ranging from tumor therapy, through biology and physics, to theoretical chemistry.
A national search for Smith’s successor will begin in early fall. A campus advisory committee is expected to be named this spring to help with that search.