Ronald White, PhD
Vice President for Research
Ronald White, PhD, brings a wealth of experience in federal agencies and administrative programs to his role as vice president for research, providing the leadership critical to expanding and strengthening our campus-wide research enterprise, cementing our status as one of the nation's premier science and engineering universities.
Following graduation from the University of Wisconsin, Dr. White spent a year as a National Science Foundation fellow at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, before becoming a professor of mathematics and director of honors at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. From 1980-85, he held positions as senior scientist and manager of biomedical research, analysis, and planning at General Electric Company. Dr. White then moved to the northeast, where he would spend over a decade in Washington, DC, and Bethesda, Maryland, serving as the chief scientist of the life sciences division at NASA headquarters and a research professor of physiology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. After working as both a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine and associate director of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, he accepted a position as a senior fellow at Universities Space Research Association and a senior scientist at NASA's Human Research Program in Texas. Dr. White joined the Mines community in 2009, where he also serves on the president's executive council and university cabinet and chairs several institutional committees.
Dr. White has authored more than 65 scientific papers published in a variety of renowned journals including Nature, Journal of Applied Physiology and Scientific American. He earned his BS in Chemistry from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.