Venkataraman Appointed Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs

Latha Venkataraman, Professor of Applied Physics and Chemistry, was appointed as Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs in January 2019. Effective July 1, 2019, she will also be named the Lawrence Gussman Professor of Applied Physics Chair.

Provost John H. Coatsworth stated, “I am pleased to welcome the newest member of the Office of the Provost, Latha Venkataraman, who I have appointed as Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs. Latha, a Professor of Applied Physics and of Chemistry, previously served on the University-wide Tenure Review Advisory Committee. As Vice Provost, she develops the University’s policies governing the appointment of its academic officers, manages Columbia’s tenure review system, and authorizes leaves on behalf of the President. She serves as a resource for deans, chairs, the University Senate and other offices, and individual faculty on academic appointments and regulations.”

Vice Provost Venkataraman joined Columbia University in 2003. Her research focuses on developing and using novel instruments to make and study electronic circuits at the nanometer scale where the functional element is a single-molecule, a collection of a few atoms. Over the past few years, her research group has developed methods to not only measure the current that flows across a single molecule, but also the force required to break such a circuit and the amount of electricity one can generate using heat in these devices. Her research is highly interdisciplinary and she has received prominent awards including the National Science Foundation Career Award, Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, and the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in Chemistry.