Elizabeth H. Simmons

Dr. Elizabeth H. Simmons (she/her/hers) is the Executive Vice Chancellor at the University of California San Diego. In this capacity, she serves as UC San Diego’s chief academic officer and is responsible for policies and decisions relating to all academic programs and curriculum, instructional support programs, and faculty appointments and performance. She is the institution’s second-ranking executive officer and acts on behalf of the Chancellor in overseeing the University in his absence. Simmons aspires for UC San Diego to work collectively and coherently in becoming an inclusive student-centered, research-focused, service-oriented university. She envisions that the university will scale up the size, connectivity, and impact of research collaborations; be as proudly innovative in education as in scholarship; and empower every Triton to succeed – undergraduates, graduate students, staff, and faculty.

Simmons is also a Distinguished Professor in the UC San Diego Department of Physics. As a theoretical high-energy physicist, Simmons’ research focuses on the origins of the masses of the elementary subatomic particles, especially the top quark. She is currently studying how physics beyond the Standard Model might manifest in experiments in progress at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Large Hadron Collider. She enjoys teaching physics courses at all levels, from introductory to graduate, and a central tenet of her mission as an educator is to encourage students from groups under-represented in physics to consider studies and careers in the physical sciences.

After completing her undergraduate degree in physics at Harvard University magna cum laude and being inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, Simmons earned an M.Phil. in physics at Cambridge University as a Churchill Scholar. She returned to Harvard for her doctoral degree and postdoctoral fellowship, and then spent a decade as a professor at Boston University and then fourteen years as a Dean, Associate Provost, and University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University (MSU). She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow, Outstanding Referee, and Divisional Councilor of the American Physical Society, an Honorary General Member of the Aspen Center for Physics, and has served on the Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She won the ACE Michigan Network’s Distinguished Woman in Higher Education Leadership Award in 2005 and MSU’s Robert F. Banks Award for Institutional Leadership in 2013.