UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Andrew Read, director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, has been selected to serve as interim senior vice president for research at Penn State during the two-year appointment of Lora Weiss as director of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Research and Development Office. Read’s position will be effective July 1.
As a member of the President’s Council, Read will serve as the principal academic and administrative officer for the Office of the Senior Vice President for Research, which advances, facilitates and manages the full breadth of Penn State’s research activities across the institution. Penn State is ranked among the nation’s top 30 public research universities, with research expenditures surpassing $1 billion in each of the past two years.
“Andrew’s experience leading one of Penn State’s largest interdisciplinary research institutes, which supports faculty members from academic colleges across Penn State, as well as his role as an internationally renowned infectious disease expert, make him well-positioned to build upon Lora’s leadership and serve the University as interim senior vice president for research,” said Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi. “In the Huck Institutes, he is already committed to fostering student and faculty achievement in critical research areas that address problems affecting society. In his new role, he will expand that level of care and support to the entire Penn State research community, and I am pleased he will step into this very important role.”
Read, who is also the Evan Pugh University Professor of Biology and Entomology and the Eberly Professor of Biotechnology, has led the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences since 2019. As an example of his forward-thinking, dynamic leadership style, in 2020, he mobilized researchers from across Penn State to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, he spearheaded a rapid-response internal call-for-proposals to address what was then an emerging outbreak, which led to significant investments of external funding to Penn State and to several corporate partnerships to advance technologies to market.
Beyond facilitating research related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Read has supported the growth of interdisciplinary research across the life sciences, including regenerative engineering, neuroscience, gerontology, microbiomes and nutritional sciences. About a quarter of Huck’s portfolio of 110 faculty co-hires have been made during Read’s time as director, in departments as diverse as mechanical engineering, communication arts and sciences, veterinary and biomedical sciences, nuclear engineering, statistics, computer science and engineering, plant science, and ecosystem science and management. He relaunched the Huck Innovative and Transformative Seed Fund (HITS), which supports, at scale, bold proposals too risky for traditional funders. Read also has ensured that Huck’s core facilities remain at the cutting edge of life science technologies and staffed by experts.
“Penn State is recognized around the world as a leading research institution with deep subject-matter expertise, and since I arrived in 2007, I’ve been inspired by the culture of thinking outside the box and collaborating across disciplines to serve the greater good,” said Read. “I am honored to build on the University’s strategic direction and lead our research enterprise to continue tackling some of the greatest challenges of our time, including local and global health, climate change and food security.”
Read’s research in evolutionary microbiology, particularly the evolution of antimicrobial drug resistance, vaccine escape and pathogen virulence, is focused on mitigating pathogen evolution that harms human well-being. He has taught ecology, evolution, microbiology and statistics. He has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed publications, 30 book chapters and four edited volumes, and has been elected to fellowships from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Microbiology, the Royal Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Originally from New Zealand, he earned a doctoral degree in evolutionary biology at the University of Oxford. He held various fellowships at Oxford and then at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where he became Chair of Natural History. In 2007, he joined the faculty of the departments of biology and entomology at Penn State.
Troy Ott, associate director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and professor of reproductive physiology in the College of Agricultural Sciences, will fill in for Read as the acting director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.