R. Russell Betts

• Member, FRA Board of Directors for Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
• Dean – College of Science and Letters and Professor of Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology
• Dr. Russell Betts is the Dean of the College of Science and Letters. He also holds the position of Professor of Physics.

A native of England, Dr. Betts received his undergraduate education at Oxford University from which he holds the degrees of B.A. (1968) and M.A.(1984). His graduate study was at the University of Pennsylvania where he was awarded M.S. (1969) and Ph.D. (1972) degrees. Following postdoctoral work at Penn (1972-73) and the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen (1973-75), Dr. Betts was appointed Assistant Professor of Physics at Yale University where he worked in the A.W.Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory. In 1979, Dr. Betts joined the scientific staff of Argonne National Laboratory where he served as Physicist and Senior Physicist until 1999. From 1984-86, Dr. Betts held appointments at Oxford University as University Lecturer in Nuclear Physics and Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. In 1995, Dr. Betts took up a joint appointment between ANL and UIC as Professor of Physics. In 1999 he moved full-time to UIC and in 2003, he was appointed Vice Provost for Planning and Programs. He became Dean of the College of Science and Letters at IIT in 2008.

Dr. Betts research interests have been wide-ranging in the fields of Atomic, Nuclear and High Energy Physics. His work is well known in the study of cluster structure in atomic nuclei and he is the discoverer of several important phenomena in this field. As spokesman of the APEX experiment, he spearheaded the U.S. effort to resolve one of the most tantalizing problems of atomic and nuclear physics – the well-known “Positron Peak Problem”. Most recently, he has led the UIC group in studies of high energy density QCD matter at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. He is co-author of over 200 articles and book chapters and has delivered more than 50 invited conference and symposium presentations at national and international meetings.

Dr. Betts is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and is an award-winning teacher. He has served as consultant and advisor to national laboratories and national and international funding organizations and conference committees.