Cassandra Moseley appointed interim research leader

Provost and Senior Vice President Patrick Phillips has named Cass Moseley to the position of interim vice president for research and innovation.

Phillips announced the appointment in an April 28 message to faculty and staff members. Moseley, the senior associate vice president for research and innovation, will succeed David Conover, the current vice president for research and innovation who is retiring in July.

Moseley is a research professor and senior associate vice president for research and innovation. She joined the UO more than 18 years ago and has had a distinguished career as a scientist and academic. She has testified before Congress as a natural resource policy expert and served as a research administrator.

“We are very fortunate to have such an experienced and capable leader to help us during this transition,” Phillips said in his announcement.

Moseley received her doctorate in political science from Yale University and her bachelor’s in mathematics and government from Cornell University. Prior to joining the UO in 2001, she was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Florida.

She serves as a research professor in the Institute for a Sustainable Environment and directs the Ecosystem Workforce Program at the UO. She has studied the changing face of wildfire management in the West and has a particular focus on how natural resource policies affect rural communities, businesses and workers, including immigrant forest workers. She examines how communities organize to increase resiliency to economic, social and environmental change.

“I’m honored to be stepping into this role during a critical time for the University of Oregon,” Moseley said. “I look forward to working alongside the provost and the president to ensure our outstanding researchers and innovators can continue to make important discoveries and other vital contributions. Now more than ever we see the importance of scholarship, research and innovation in supporting societal well-being.”

Moseley joined the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation in 2014 and served in a number of roles in the office, including senior project leader, senior advisor and chief of staff. She also serves as deputy incident commander for the UO’s Incident Management Team and has been critical in ensuring that the university’s research operations — and the entire university — are in a strong position to respond to the current pandemic crisis.

An academic expert in natural resource policy, Moseley has participated in dozens of briefings and presentations to congressional and presidential administration officials, including the White House Economic Council and the Regional Development Cluster. A frequent voice in radio and print media, she has written extensively about wildfire and resource management policy, both for journalism outlets like the Los Angeles Times and research journals such as Science.

The UO’s national search for Conover’s replacement is on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The search committee, which is led by Darren Johnson, director of the UO Materials Science Institute, will resume its efforts in the fall.