Jeff Zaleski has been appointed vice provost for research and associate vice president for research at Indiana University Bloomington, Interim Provost and Executive Vice President John S. Applegate announced.
A Provost Professor of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, Zaleski has served on the IU Bloomington faculty for more than 25 years, and in the interim role since 2019. He will continue his role as associate vice provost for the sciences.
The Office of the Vice Provost for Research oversees more than 20 Bloomington campus research entities, ranging from Laboratory Animal Research facilities and the Center for Exploration of Energy and Matter to the Kinsey Institute and the Light Microscopy Imaging Center. Zaleski also oversees numerous internal funding programs through the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute Hub in the IU School of Medicine, for which he also serves as deputy director. He works closely with IU’s State Relations Office and its Federal Research Relations Office in Washington, D.C., to secure appropriations and grant opportunities with specific agencies.
“Jeff is a terrific colleague who has made significant contributions to initiatives for faculty research development,” Applegate said. “In the past few years alone, he has introduced new funding programs and overseen the reorganization of three centers. He also spearheaded the vision for a fund to drive research capital sources independent of the primary university budget.”
Applegate added that Zaleski’s leadership was crucial to the development of a robust campus Covid-19 testing laboratory, with 50,000+ tests each week, through the expansion of the Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics.
“This is truly an exciting time for IU, the state of Indiana, and the region, and I am looking forward to pushing the boundaries of our research even further through continued and expanded support of arts and humanities, social sciences, professional schools, and new initiatives in the hard sciences and engineering, specifically related to AI,” Zaleski said.
In collaboration with the National Security Innovation Network, Zaleski co-authored an application with NSWC Crane to establish an academic accelerator grant to build research teams that develop dual use technologies for industry and the Department of Defense. In the summer of 2021, Zaleski’s team helped curate a relationship with the National Security Innovation Network that funded undergraduate research internships in the students’ areas of personal interest. He is the chief scientific liaison to the Indiana Innovation Institute, which recently secured a long-term contract with the Joint Artificial Intelligence Agency to manage all AI-related research interests for the Department of Defense. In this role and as deputy director for CTSI, he works closely with Purdue and the University of Notre Dame.
As interim vice provost, he created opportunities in the social sciences through the creation of an associate vice provost for social science research position in 2020, and by strongly supporting development of the Socio-Medical Sciences Center.
Zaleski received his B.S. degree from SUNY at Geneseo in 1988, followed by his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1993. He was subsequently awarded the Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University where he studied physical-bioorganic chemistry under the direction of Professor Edward I. Solomon. He joined the faculty at IU in 1996. His research interests are in the fields of metals in medicine, bioinorganic chemistry, and synthetic chemistry and materials.
