George Campbell Jr., Ph.D.

George Campbell is president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Founded in 1859, The Cooper Union is an all honors college and one of America's most selective institutions of higher education. Perennially ranked by U.S. News and World Report among the nation's top three baccalaureate colleges, it offers degrees in architecture, engineering and fine arts. All admitted students receive a full-tuition scholarship. The college also offers a rich array of public exhibitions, performing arts programs and lecture series. Its historic Great Hall has provided a platform for American presidents from Abraham Lincoln to William Jefferson Clinton and has been the birth place of major social reform movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

For 11 years, prior to his current appointment, Dr. Campbell was president and CEO of NACME, Inc., a non-profit corporation focused on engineering education and science and technology policy that offered the nation's largest private engineering scholarship program for economically disadvantaged students. Previously, Dr. Campbell spent 12 years at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he held various R&D and management positions and, for seven years, served as a U.S. delegate to the International Telecommunications Union. Earlier in his career, Dr. Campbell served on the faculties of Nkumbi International College in Zambia and Syracuse University. He has published papers in mathematical physics, high-energy physics, satellite systems, digital communications, science and technology policy and science education. He is co-editor of Access Denied: Race, Ethnicity and the Scientific Enterprise, Oxford University Press.

Dr. Campbell currently serves on the Board of Directors of Consolidated Edison, Inc., one of the nation's largest investor-owned energy companies, and the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation. He is also a trustee of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities (cIcu), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Montefiore Medical Center, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Institute of International Education and the New York Hall of Science. He has served on a number of other science and technology policy bodies, including the Morella Commission of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the New York City Chancellor's Task Force on Science Education (chairman) and the Education Policy Advisory Committee of the New York State Governor's transition team. Dr. Campbell has been a regular guest commentator for PBS-TV's Nightly Business Report and has been profiled in a lead article in The Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Campbell earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Syracuse University, a B.S. in physics from Drexel University and is a graduate of the executive management program at Yale University. As an undergraduate, he was a Simon Guggenheim Scholar and member of the national physics honor society. Among Dr. Campbell's awards are the 1993 George Arents Pioneer Medal in Physics, the Drexel University Centennial Medal, the Leon J. Obermeyer Award from the City of Philadelphia Board of Education and several honorary doctorates. On behalf of NACME, he accepted a U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence and the U.S. Department of Labor's EPIC Award. He's a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the New York Academy of Sciences.

Married to Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, dean of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts who also serves as chair of the New York State Council on the Arts, Dr. Campbell and his wife have three sons and live in Manhattan.