Phyllis Wise Named Chancellor of the Flagship Campus of the University of Illinois

Phyllis M. Wise was selected to become chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and vice president of the University of Illinois system. Her appointment is effective October 1, pending approval by the board of trustees. She will also hold a tenured position in the department of cell and developmental biology and in the department of molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine.

Dr. Wise has been serving as provost and executive vice president at the University of Washington in Seattle. During the 2010-11 academic year, she was interim president at the University of Washington. She has been on the faculty at the University of Washington since 2005. Previously, Professor Wise was dean of the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California at Davis. She was professor and chair of the department of physiology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington from 1993 to 2001. She served for 16 years on the faculty at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Dr. Wise continues an active research program in issues concerning women’s health and gender-based biology. She has been particularly interested in whether hormones influence brains of women and men during development, during adulthood, and during aging.

Dr. Wise is a graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She holds a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Michigan.