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Page Hired as Founding Director of ASU’s New School of Life Sciences

Robert E. Page, Jr., formerly professor and chairperson of the Department of Entomology at the University of California at Davis, has been appointed to be the founding director of Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences, a new multi-disciplinary unit formed in July 2003 with the merger of the former departments of Biology, Microbiology and Plant Biology.

“We were pleased that we were able to attract a scientist of Dr. Page’s caliber to head our new School of Life Sciences,” said David Young, ASU Vice President and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “The school is at the forefront of growth and innovation at ASU, and I am confident that Dr. Page has the combination of vision and experience that we need to lead it.”

According to Page, he chose to make the move from California because of the opportunities offered by a growing state, a dynamic university and a new school. “I think that the opportunities here with the School of Life Sciences are amazing,” he said. “If you look across the country right now, everybody is retrenching and decreasing. Here it is going exactly the opposite direction.

“The people who are going to be hired in over the next two to four years are going to be here for 20 to 30 years,” he noted. “It’s a chance to do something that is going to impact life sciences for a long time.”
Page has been at UC Davis since 1989 and chair of the Department of Entomology there since 1999. He was previously on the faculty of Ohio State University.

As a researcher, Page is well suited to direct and shape programs in the life sciences, which are currently at the leading edge of scientific growth and change. Page is an authority on the evolutionary and behavioral genetics of social insects, an area of transdisciplinary research that involves physiology, neurobiology, behavioral science, evolutionary biology and genetics. He is the author of more than 140 research articles in scientific journals, as well as of a number popular articles and reviews. His active research grants are in excess of $1.4 million.

Page has received numerous scholarly honors, including being named a fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1992, receiving the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award in 1995, and being elected as a foreign member to the Brazilian Academy of Science.