Arthur Ellis, PhD

Arthur B. Ellis is a retired Vice president for Research and Graduate Studies at the University of California Office of the president and Meloche-Bascom Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, whose career spanned university teaching, federal science policy, and international higher education leadership. Born in Oakland, Calif., in 1951, he earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and his doctorate in inorganic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977, where his thesis examined stabilized photoelectrochemical cells as energy conversion devices. Ellis joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin—Madison directly after graduate school and rose to become the Meloche-Bascom Professor of Chemistry, a distinguished endowed chair. Over nearly three decades at Wisconsin, he published approximately 200 research papers and obtained nine patents, with scholarly work concentrated on solar energy conversion, chemical sensors, and smart materials. He was equally celebrated as an educator: when high-temperature superconductors were first demonstrated in 1987, he rapidly assembled low-cost demonstration kits that allowed thousands of schoolchildren to witness levitating magnets firsthand. His pedagogical innovations earned him one of the inaugural NSF Director’s Distinguished Teaching Scholar Awards, an NSF Director’s Meritorious Service Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1990. Ellis took a leave from Wisconsin in 2002 to serve as director of the Division of Chemistry at the National Science Foundation, overseeing investments in basic research, Chemical Bonding Centers, and programs to broaden participation in the chemistry community. He moved to the University of California, San Diego, in 2006 as vice chancellor for research, then served as provost of City University of Hong Kong from 2010 to 2016, before returning to the University of California system as vice president for research and graduate studies at the UC Office of the President — a role from which he retired in 2019. He subsequently joined Elsevier as a senior advisor. Ellis received the American Chemical Society’s George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education in 1997.