2025
Eric Isaacs became president of Research Corporation for Science Advancement on July 1, 2025.
Before joining RCSA, Isaacs served as president of the Carnegie Institute for Science from 2018 to 2024. During his tenure at Carnegie, he led the strategic reorganization of the 120-year-old independent research institution to strengthen its interdisciplinary research capabilities. He developed a formal research partnership with Caltech that included plans for a new state-of-the-art research facility in Pasadena and served on the board of the Giant Magellan Telescope as a founding member of the international coalition to build the 25-meter instrument at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Previously, as Executive Vice President for Research, Innovation and National Laboratories at the University of Chicago, he oversaw more than $1.5 billion in sponsored research, including forefront science and engineering at the University of Chicago Medical Center, Argonne National Laboratory, Fermilab, and the Marine Biological Laboratory. He also served as the university’s provost, and director of the Argonne National Laboratory. Isaacs also served as Director of the Semiconductor and Materials Physics departments at Bell Laboratories in the 1990s.