Parag Chitnis has been hired as University of Wyoming’s vice-president for research and economic development, joining from the US Department of Agriculture.
University of Wyoming (UW) has named Parag Chitnis as its new vice-president for research and economic development and he will officially start on May 31.
He will be responsible for overseeing research activities across UW’s faculty, staff and students, directing technology transfer and commercialisation initiatives, facilitating industry-academia interactions and promoting the university’s research mission.
His remit falls within UW’s efforts to become a top tier research university – a status known as R1 in the Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education.
In addition to serving as vice-president, Chitnis will also be a tenured professor in the Department of Molecular Biology.
Chitnis moves to UW from the US Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), where he has most recently been acting as associate director since September 2019. He originally joined the institute as deputy director in 2014.
He previously spent more than 12 years with the National Science Foundation, climbing the ranks to eventually serve as division director for three years until his departure.
Earlier in his career, he was a researcher at Roche Institute of Molecular Biology from 1987 to 1991, before joining the faculty at Kansas State University and then Iowa State University in 1996.
Chitnis said: “I am honoured to join UW’s dynamic leadership team for advancing president Seidel’s transformative vision for digital, entrepreneurial, inclusive and interdisciplinary excellence at UW.
“The impressive faculty, dedicated staff, energetic students and a clear set of goals position UW on an exciting path to seed and nurture even more creative activities at UW; to enhance research infrastructure; and to catalyse economic prosperity for Wyoming citizens by innovating avenues for deliberate commercialisation of research outputs.”
– Image courtesy of NIFA via University of Wyoming
