After nearly six years as Portland State’s first Vice President for Research, Jonathan Fink will be leaving the post on June 30 to focus on "smart city" research projects. The university will conduct a national search for a replacement in the fall and an interim VP will be named in the next few weeks.
"Jon built a first class research operation, and used his extensive outside connections and creativity to open many new doors for PSU," said Wim Wiewel, president of PSU.
During his tenure, Fink and his team created an organization that was more responsive to research-active faculty needs while better connecting PSU’s research with its major strategic partners like OHSU, the City of Portland, and Intel.
"Portland knows it needs an outstanding research university to meet its economic development goals," said Fink. "PSU attracts world-class faculty, drawn to Portland's quality of life. But to become a great university, we have to supply these top faculty with robust research infrastructure and services, something we've worked for six years to provide."
Before coming to PSU, Fink was a geology faculty member and administrator at Arizona State University, including a decade as their research VP, and director of their Global Institute of Sustainability. Best known for his research on volcanoes, Fink first visited PSU in June 1980, when he came to study the mudflows that formed during Mount St. Helens’ catastrophic May 18 eruption. At the time, PSU's Geology Department was the headquarters for scientists visiting the volcano.
“It’s probably not an accident that PSU hired a volcanologist to bring us to the next level as a research university,” said Dr. Katharine Cahn, PSU’s largest grant-getter and the executive director of a research and training center in the School of Social Work. “He had a clear plan, engaged the expertise of many across campus, and stayed steady through the sometimes-explosive process of getting our research infrastructure right.”
Fink will serve for a year as Senior Advisor to Wiewel, while continuing to work on research and policy initiatives in urban sustainability, technology development, and natural hazards. He will take a faculty position in the Geology Department in Fall, 2017.