Kevin M. Smith, a biological chemist who has been serving as associate vice chancellor for research at the University of California, Davis, since last September, will assume the vice chancellorship August 1. Smith's appointment was approved today (July 18) by the UC Board of Regents. Smith, 55, will be responsible for facilitating research within all of the campus's colleges, schools, hospitals and clinics; increasing and managing extramural financial support, including support for large, long-term and interdisciplinary projects; furthering research relationships with government and industry; and accelerating the campus's technology transfer program. He succeeds Robert N. Shelton, who resigned last October to become the vice provost for research for the University of California. "Professor Smith's scholarly record is flat out extraordinary," said Chancellor Larry N. Vanderhoef. "His research team is considered to be the premier group in the world in his field, and his record of uninterrupted research funding over the past 20 years is remarkable; he has received support from virtually every major granting agency. As associate vice chancellor, he has already demonstrated for us the leadership that will serve UC Davis well in the pursuit of our research mission." Trained in synthetic organic chemistry, Smith now works in the area of biological chemistry. His research activities incorporate areas ranging from tumor therapy, through biology and physics, to theoretical chemistry. He is an unusually productive scientist, with more than 540 papers either published, in press or submitted for publication in top-quality, referred journals. He has also written two books and is co-inventor on six patents. In 1996 alone, he and his collaborators published 37 papers and were awarded one patent. He has received continued funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health since he arrived at UC Davis in 1977. He has received funding from the Department of Energy and the Office of Naval Research as well. "It's a great honor to be appointed as our campus's next vice chancellor for research," Smith said. "I cannot think of anything more important than to be given responsibility for the facilitation and advancement of research in one of the world's best research universities. We have many challenges ahead of us, and I'm greatly looking forward to leading the whole campus community in the pursuit of excellence and increased UC Davis prominence in research." Smith received a B.Sc. in chemistry and a Ph.D. and a D. Sc. in organic chemistry from the University of Liverpool in 1964, 1967 and 1977, respectively. He was a research fellow at Harvard University from 1967 to 1969, and served as a lecturer with tenure at the University of Liverpool from 1969 to 1977. He joined the UC Davis faculty as a professor in 1977 and served as chair of the Department of Chemistry from 1990 to 1994. He was appointed associate vice chancellor for research in September 1996. His honors include numerous invitations to deliver invited talks, a Fulbright Award, the Corday-Morgan Medal and Prize of the London Chemical Society for the most meritorious contributions to experimental organic chemistry, the University of Liverpool's Potts Medal, and the Parke-Davis Postgraduate Prize. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, the University of Rome II in Italy, the University of Bourgogne in Dijon, France, and a senior science fellow in Kyoto, Japan.