Colin S. Duckett, Ph.D., director of research for The University of Michigan's North Campus Research Complex, will be the first of at least four candidates for the position of vice president of Research to present in the coming weeks. His public presentation is scheduled 9-10 a.m. Oct. 11 in Cudworth Auditorium.A national search began this summer after Richard B. Marchase, Ph.D., vice president for Research and Economic Development, announced his intent to retire at the end of 2016. In 2015, UAB received more than $400 million in research grants and contracts and increased its research and development expenditures to $510 million from $430 million the previous year.
The vice president of Research will be responsible for broadening UAB’s research portfolio across the campus and driving strategic planning and research operations that nurture excellent research, scholarship and creative activity by faculty, staff and students. A full description of the position is on the executive search website.
Duckett, who has directed Research at UM’s North Research Complex since 2012, also is co-director of Cancer Cell Biology at the Comprehensive Cancer Center and associate director of the Graduate Program in Cancer Biology. He is a professor in the departments of Pathology and Internal Medicine and Division of Molecular Medicine and Genetics, and he has been a consultant for the University of Michigan Office of the Vice President for Research.
Following postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago, where he co-discovered the IAP family of signaling intermediates, he took his first independent position at the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute. Duckett has served on several review panels and editorial boards, and he consulted and served on the scientific advisory boards of several biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. He was a serving member of the Defense Science Study Group, a program in which participants focus on defense policy, related research and development and the systems and operations of the armed forces.
Duckett’s research interests include molecular mechanisms of cellular transformation of Hodgkin’s disease and anaplastic large cell lymphoma, regulation of apoptotic cell death and proliferation in cancer, characterization of the canonical and noncanonical NF-B signaling pathways in normal and malignant cells and homeostatic regulation of intracellular copper in mammalian cells.
The search committee, chaired by Curt Carver, Ph.D., vice president for Information Technology and chief information officer, and co-chaired by Anupam Agarwal, M.D., School of Medicine professor and executive vice dean, and director of the Division of Nephrology. Committee members include representatives from academic and executive leadership and community partners:
- Iwan Alexander, Ph.D., dean, School of Engineering
- David Bedwell, Ph.D., chair, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics
- Etty (Tika) Benveniste, Ph.D., senior associate dean for Research Administration and Development, School of Medicine
- Karen Gamble, Ph.D., chair, Research Committee of the UAB Faculty Senate; associate professor, Psychiatry
- Lauretta Gerrity, DVM, senior associate vice president for Research Administration
- Bertha Hidalgo, Ph.D., assistant professor, Epidemiology
- Allen Johnston, Ph.D., associate professor, Management, Information Systems and Quantitative Methods
- Alesia Jones, chief human resources officer
- Haley Kendrick, graduate student trainee, Medical Sociology
- Robert Kimberly, M.D., director, Center for Clinical and Translational Science
- Virginia Gilbert Loftin, assistant vice president for Development Communications
- Lori McMahon, Ph.D., dean, Graduate School
- Sanjay Singh, Ph.D., partner, CTS
- Arthur Tipton, Ph.D., president and CEO, Southern Research
- Yogesh Vohra, Ph.D., associate dean, Physics
