Summit Speaker: Michael Witherell

Michael Witherell

Vice Chancellor for Research
UC Santa Barbara

Michael Witherell is Vice Chancellor for Research at UC Santa Barbara and holds a University of California Presidential Chair in the Physics Department. He served as Director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), which operated the world’s largest accelerator for particle physics, from 1999 to 2005. Before that, he was a faculty member in the physics department at UCSB.  Dr. Witherell was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1998 for his research in particle physics, and he now serves as chair of the physics section at NAS.  In 2004 he received the   U. S. Secretary of Energy’s Gold Award from the Department of Energy. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society.