Rice University selects George McLendon as new provost
Rice University
May 27, 2010
George McLendon, a leading biochemist and dean of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University in North Carolina, has been named provost of Rice University, Rice President David Leebron announced April 21. The Texas native will take over his new post July 1.
McLendon succeeds Eugene Levy, who has served as provost since 2000. Levy will take a one-year sabbatical before returning to Rice to teach in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and to serve as senior fellow for science policy and education at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
“George McLendon has a stellar reputation as a scientist, entrepreneur, academic leader and intellectual, and we are thrilled that he is joining Rice as our next provost,” Leebron said. “Gene Levy has created a wonderful legacy in his decade as provost, and I am confident that George will continue to move Rice along its trajectory to become one of the best research universities in the world.”
McLendon, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has served as dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences as well as dean of Trinity College since 2008. Trinity is Duke’s liberal arts college and has 635 faculty members in 36 departments and programs. McLendon was first named dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2004. Prior to his career at Duke, he served as chair of Princeton’s Department of Chemistry from 1996 to 2004. He also taught and served in several leadership roles at the University of Rochester from 1976 to 1995.
A native of Fort Worth, Texas, McLendon earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1972 and his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Texas A&M in 1976. He is widely recognized and published in the field of chemistry and biochemistry and won the 1990 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry from the American Chemistry Society and Guggenheim and A.P. Sloan research fellowships.
His current research focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, stroke and other diseases. He has founded several biotechnology startup companies, including TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals, which works on cancer diagnosis and therapeutics.
