Radenka Maric has been appointed interim president of the University of Connecticut. She is replacing interim president Andrew Agwunobi, who has led the university since July 2021 and is taking a position with Humana.
Dr. Maric has served as vice president for research since 2017 and oversees the university’s $375 million research enterprise at the main campus in Storrs, the health campus in Farmington, the School of Law in Hartford, and four regional campuses around the state. Previously, she served as the inaugural executive director of the university’s $132 million Innovation Partnership Building, which houses state-of-art specialized equipment and research centers of excellence and serves as a nexus for industry-academic partnerships.
Dr. Maric is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund Professor of Sustainable Energy in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering and the department of materials science and engineering. Her research interests include fundamental understanding of the effect of structure, defects, and microstructure on transport and electrical properties of surfaces and interfaces. She is interested in developing novel materials for fuel cells, batteries, and biosensors.
Dr. Maric earned a bachelor’s degree from Belgrade University in Serbia. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Kyoto University in Japan.