SUBJECT:

Appointment of Peter F. Cowhey as Interim Executive Vice Chancellor

I am pleased to announce that Peter F. Cowhey, Dean of UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy and holder of the Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Communications and Technology Policy, will serve as Interim Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, effective August 1, 2016. Dr. Cowhey will assume this leadership role following EVC Suresh Subramani’s return to the faculty on July 31.

A member of the UC San Diego faculty since 1976, Dr. Cowhey is an international expert on the future of communications and information technology markets and policy, specializing in United States trade and regulatory policy. His work as a scholar and a government official was central to the reorganization of competition in global communication and information markets in the past twenty years. His research has also address issues ranging from U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-Asia relations, Internet governance, innovation policy and international corporate strategy, global biological threats, and the microfinance industry to alleviate poverty. He was director of the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) from 1999 – 2006 and Associate Vice Chancellor for International Affairs at UC San Diego from 2007 – 2009. He chaired the campus committees that created the Rady School of Management. In July 2002, he was selected as Dean of the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, now the School of Global Policy and Strategy. He currently serves on the board of the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Foundation for Earth Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Dr. Cowhey has a long history of public service. He currently serves as co-chair of a bi-national experts group on innovation and technology policy appointed by the U.S. and Chinese governments that reports to the Strategic and Economic Dialogue conducted by the top leaders of the two countries. In 2009, he served a 12-month assignment as the senior counselor to Ambassador Ron Kirk in the Office of the United States Trade Representative, playing a key role in the strategic agenda for trade policy. In the Clinton Administration he was chief of the International Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and negotiated many of the U.S. international agreements for telecommunications and satellite services. He had responsibility for antitrust decisions involving the communications and satellite industries. In addition to having served on the advisory boards of the United Nations Development Program and the U.S. Agency for International Development, he has advised over fifty countries on reforming their communications markets.

He is currently the vice chair of the California Council on Science and Technology and the vice chair of the Board of Directors of the Grameen Foundation USA, the U.S. foundation supporting the work of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Dr. Cowhey is a member of the Global Competitiveness Council of San Diego, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Pacific Council on International Affairs. Because of his work on innovation policy, in recent years he has been the chief policy officer for the Aspen Institute’s project on the digital economy, chaired CONNECT’s Innovation Institute, and serves on the Advisory Councils of the Asia Pacific Institute for the Digital Economy and the Life Sciences Innovation Network-Japan.

Dr. Cowhey holds a B.A. in foreign services from Georgetown University, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He.has been a research scholar at Qualcomm Institute at the California Institute on Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), a non-resident fellow of the Annenberg Center of Communications at the University of Southern California, and a visiting scholar at Sciences Po (Paris), the Juan March Institute (Madrid) and the University of Tokyo

Dr. Cowhey is a stellar leader who has been a key advisor since my arrival on campus in 2012. He is recognized as an outstanding scholar with a wealth of administrative experience, and I am grateful for his willingness to lead Academic Affairs during this important time in UC San Diego’s history. In Fall 2016, I will launch an international search for Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.

Pradeep K. Khosla Chancellor