John B. Simpson came to UB following a distinguished 30-year career in higher education. Most recently, he has been executive vice chancellor and provost of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Prior to that he had a 23-year teaching, research, and administrative career at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1994-98. The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington has an enrollment of 18,000 undergraduate and 3,500 graduate students.
Simpson joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington in 1975. He was named a professor in 1982 and was director of the Joint Physiology-Psychology Program from 1984-88 and head of the Physiological Psychology Area from 1986-90. He served as associate dean for computing, facilities, and research in the university's College of Arts and Sciences from 1991-94.
A graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Simpson received master's and doctoral degrees in neurobiology and behavior from Northwestern University. He was a research associate and fellow of the Institute of Neurological Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania from 1973-75. His research work is in the area of the neuroendocrinology of body fluids and the cardiovascular system. He also has been a visiting professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology and Medicine at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
During his term as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, he guided the college through significant budget reductions while fostering innovation in interdisciplinary programs, such as the creation of a center for humanities research. At UC Santa Cruz, he was the chief academic and budgetary officer as this campus of the University of California grew from fewer than 11,000 students to its present size of nearly 15,000 students. He has overseen the creation of new graduate programs in digital arts and new media, bioinformatics, electrical engineering, and politics, and an innovative Ed.D. degree with San Jose State University. These developments were framed by a campus-wide, long-term strategic planning process completed under his leadership as provost.
John B. Simpson, Ph.D., took office as UB's 14th president on Jan. 1, 2004.
| 
