Phyllis M. Wise, Ph.D.
University of Washington
Phyllis M. Wise became Provost and Executive Vice President at the University of Washington in 2005. As the University’s chief academic and budgetary officer, the Provost provides leadership in educational and curriculum development, formulation and allocation of budget and space, long-range strategic planning, and management of the University’s research programs. She serves as deputy to the President and provides advice and assistance to him, the deans and the faculty in these matters.
Wise, who is a professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Biology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology, previously served as dean of the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California at Davis, from 2002 to 2005. Prior to that, she was professor and chair of the Department of Physiology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington from 1993 to 2002. Wise was a faculty member at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, from 1976 to 1993, promoting through the ranks to full professor of physiology in 1987.
She holds a bachelor's degree (1967) from Swarthmore College in biology and a doctorate degree (1972) in zoology from the University of Michigan. In 2008 she was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree from Swarthmore College.
Provost Wise continues an active research program in issues concerning women’s health and gender-based biology. She has been particularly interested in whether hormones influence brains of women and men during development, during adulthood and during aging. She has been involved in the discussion of whether males and females have different strategies in learning and memory and whether this may make them more suited for some careers as opposed to others. She has been continuously funded by the NIH for over 30 years and has received two MERIT Awards, which provide funding for innovative research over a 10-year period of time. She is the author of more than 200 scientific publications. Wise was featured in the Parade Magazine cover story on "The Quiet Heroes" engaged in lifesaving research. She has received many awards, and is particularly proud of those that have acknowledged her lifelong dedication to mentoring students and junior investigators, particularly women. She received the Excellence in Science from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in 2002, and the Women in Endocrinology Mentor Award in 2003. In 2008 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and became a member of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine in 2003.
She has served on numerous committees and councils, including NIH study sections, the advisory board for RAND Health, the Bullitt Foundation Board of Trustees, the scientific advisory council for the Society of Women's Health Research, the advisory board of the University of Michigan Nathan Shock Center for Biological Aging, the Kronos Research Foundation, and councils of the American Physiological Society, the Endocrine Society, and the Gerontological Society of America.
Dr. Wise’s service as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board is independent of her responsibilities to the University of Washington.