Prakash Nagarkatti, Ph.D.
Vice President for Research and Graduate Education

Prakash Nagarkatti, Ph.D. is currently the Vice President for Research at the University of South Carolina. He also serves as Carolina Distinguished Professor, and Director of the NIH Center of Research Excellence in Inflammatory and Autoimmune Diseases (http://camcenter.med.sc.edu/) and Director of the NIH COBRE Center for Dietary Supplement and Inflammation (http://cobre.med.sc.edu/). From 2005-2011, he served as Associate Dean at the School of Medicine. His research has been continuously supported by numerous grants from NIH, NSF/EPA, and American Cancer Society. Since joining USC in 2005, his research has bought in more than $30 million. Dr. Nagarkatti has published over 180 scientific papers and book chapters and has trained over 28 graduate students, 16 post-doctoral fellows and 17 junior faculty. He continues to teach and has won numerous awards nationally and internationally for teaching and scholarly activity. He has several patents on treatment modalities against cancer and inflammatory diseases. He has chaired and served as a member on numerous NIH Review Panels. He has been invited to give keynote/plenary talks at international meetings. Dr. Nagarkatti has also served on a number of advisory and review panels nationally and internationally, for federal government and private foundations.

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Pamela K. Benicewicz, Ph.D.
Associate Vice President for Research

Pam Benicewicz is currently Associate Vice President for Research at the University of South Carolina. In this role, which became effective in October of 2009, she is responsible for developing and implementing a strategy to establish a wide variety of intra- and inter- institutional research collaborations, thus facilitating partnerships between the University of South Carolina and industry, national laboratories, and other universities. She serves as the point of contact with potential collaborators, and promotes student research and advancement through these interactions.

Before joining the university, Dr. Benicewicz worked at General Electric for ten years, most recently for GE Energy in Greenville, SC and at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, NY for over eight years prior to that. At GE, she was a senior physicist, project leader, principal investigator, and interim lab manager responsible for all aspects of project and program management, including funding, resource management, identification of new opportunities, and interfacing with the other GE businesses (primarily GE Aviation, GE Energy, and GE Healthcare). She was also an active experimental physicist, specializing in the area of optical physics. Her work included developing laser-based spectroscopic techniques and systems that provided in-situ, real-time evaluation of materials as well as developing optical diagnostic techniques to monitor laser-based processes, such as laser shock peening. She holds seven US patents from her work at GE with an additional three patents pending.

Prior to her positions at GE, Dr. Benicewicz was a Research Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, where she taught and established a research program based on the use of lasers and optical techniques to detect and identify hazardous materials in the environment. From 1993 until 1997, Dr. Benicewicz was a Team Leader and staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, NM. She led a team of research scientists and technicians engaged in the study of the chemical and physical properties of heavy metals (actinides).

Dr. Benicewicz also spent six years as a statistician for Johnson & Johnson and American Home Products. Her work included the experimental design and analysis of experiments in an R&D environment, including process optimization and quality control. She was responsible for the design and analysis of pre-clinical trials for the approval of new medical products, and the design and statistical analysis of clinical trials for NDA submission of anti-hypertension medications.

Benicewicz received her bachelor's degree cum laude and her master's degree in statistics from the University of Florida, where she was also inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. She received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of New Mexico in 1993. She is married to Dr. Brian C. Benicewicz, USC Educational Foundation Distinguished Professor and CoEE Chair in Polymer Nanocomposites. They have two children, Derek and Leigh Ann.

Tom Vogt, Ph.D.
Associate Vice President for Research

Dr. Thomas Vogt is Associate Vice President for Research for the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Director of the NanoCenter, Education Foundation Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina. Since 2009 he is also faculty member in Materials Science at the African University of Science & Technology in Abuja, Nigeria.

He received a Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Tübingen in Germany in 1987, was scientist at the Institute Laue-Langevin in Grenoble France from 1988-1992 and joined Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1995 where he became leader of the Materials Synthesis & Characterization Group in the Physics Department and directed initial Materials Science efforts in the Center for Functional Nanomaterials. In 2005 he joined the University of South Carolina. His research focuses on structure-composition-property relationships of new materials and he has worked extensively in materials science, solid state chemistry and physics with a focus on developing and applying neutron, x-ray and electron diffraction and imaging techniques. He is also interested in philosophical, legal, ethical and societal implications of nanotechnology and other emerging technologies. He is past member of the Board of Directors for the USC Research Foundation and the Technical Advisory Board of the atom probe manufacturer IMAGO and serves as a CTO for three technology startups in the US. Dr. Vogt is author of more than 270 peer reviewed papers, has authored 5 US patents and is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.