Eric Isaacs

Who is Eric Isaacs?

Eric Isaacs is an American physicist. He is the current director of the United States Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, since May 2009. He previously worked at Bell Labs and at the Center for Nanoscale Materials. He is a professor of physics at the University of Chicago.

In December of 2013 it was announced that he would be the new Provost of The University of Chicago.

Before becoming Argonne Director, Isaacs served as Argonne's deputy laboratory director for programs, with responsibility for leading the laboratory's strategic planning process and overseeing the laboratory-directed research and development program as well as its educational programs.

Earlier he distinguished himself both as director of the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne and as professor of physics in the University of Chicago's James Franck Institute. During his 13-year tenure at Bell Labs, he was a member of the technical staff, director of the Materials Physics Research Department and director of the Semiconductor Physics Department.

He received a Ph.D. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988 in the area of magnetic semiconductors and was a postdoctoral fellow at Bell Laboratories studying magnetism and correlated electronic systems, mostly with synchrotron-based X-ray techniques.