Liesl Folks

Liesl Folks currently serves as the vice president for semiconductor strategy at the University of Arizona, where she is also a professor of electrical and computer engineering. For the period 2019-2023, she served the institution as Provost, leading strong growth in on-campus and online student enrollment, greatly expanding research activity, increasing diversity of faculty, staff and students, leading salary equity reviews for faculty, introducing minimum stipends for graduate student researchers, and the launch of two new colleges.

Before joining the university in July 2019, she was dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University at Buffalo. There she led the rapid growth of the engineering school, adding 75 faculty members and 2,700 students and increasing research expenditures by 35%. She is a champion for women and underrepresented minorities in engineering and science.

Folks holds 12 U.S. patents and has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed papers that have attracted more than 13,300 citations. She is now serving as National Academies committee chair for the panel on Global Microelectronics: Models for the Department of Defense in Semiconductor Public-Private Partnerships. Dr. Folks is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Prior to her career in higher education, she spent 16 years in research and development at IBM Almaden Research Center, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and Western Digital.

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Research Interests