KINGSTON – In a blow to the state’s efforts to boost its science and technology sector, a prominent University of Rhode Island administrator who has helped lead those initiatives said today he is leaving to take a job in Texas, PBN has learned.
Jeffrey R. Seemann, dean of the University of Rhode Island’s College of the Environment and Life Sciences and co-chair of the R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council, plans to leave URI to become vice president of research at Texas A&M University on July 1, he said in an e-mail to colleagues and students.
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Texas A&M is scheduled to announce Seemann’s hiring later today, he said. Seemann visited the university in March and again in April. His appointment still needs approval from The Board of Regents of The Texas A&M University System.
“This is a great opportunity for me that I just couldn’t say ‘no’ to,” Seemann explained in the e-mail. He noted that Texas A&M’s annual research budget totals nearly $600 million and that its new leadership is aiming to turn the school into a Top 10 research university.
In an effort to prevent Seemann from departing, a prominent local researcher, Dr. Anne De Groot – whom Seemann wooed to URI from Brown University to lead the state school’s new Institute for Immunology and Informatics – had launched a below-the-radar petition campaign to prevent him from leaving, saying “the very reason I moved to URI is about to disappear.”
Seemann said he will lead Texas A&M’s Division of Research and Graduate Studies, which will give him responsibility for 8,500 graduate students. Texas A&M has roughly 48,000 students in total. Seemann will hold a tenured joint appointment as professor in Texas A&M’s Department of Biology and Department of Biochemistry/Biophysics, he said.
Seemann said he had “a wonderful eight years” at URI. “Together we have accomplished great things, and I hope that you all feel that I will have left the college, university, and state better than I found it,” he said in the e-mail.
“Cassandra, our children and I will always remember fondly our time in Rhode Island,” he added. “If you are ever in College Station, Texas, I hope that you will stop in to say hi.”
Seemann received his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in biological sciences from Stanford University, according to his STAC biography. Before joining URI in July 2001, he spent 17 years as a professor and head of the biochemistry department at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Seemann took over the dean’s position from William R. Wright, who served as interim dean after the previous dean, Margaret Leinen, left for a position at the National Science Foundation last year.
Seemann has been a familiar presence in the state’s biotechnology and life sciences sector in recent years. In 2005, he served on the committee that decided to merge the state’s four quasi-public venture funds into the single Slater Technology Fund.
Seemann also has been co-chair of the Science and Technology Advisory Council since it was created by Gov. Donald L. Carcieri in 2005. The other co-chair is currently Clyde Briant, Brown University’s vice president for research. The following year, Seemann worked on the creation of STAC’s Rhode Island Research Alliance, a statewide program supporting collaborations between academic and business researchers in the state.
More recently, Seemann was the point man for URI’s construction of the new Center for Biotechnology & Life Sciences, a 142,000-square-foot building that opened in January at a cost of nearly $60 million.
