ERIC KALER
Age: 54
Hometown: Burlington, Vt.
Education: Received undergraduate degree from California Institute of Technology in 1978.
• Got his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1982.
Career path: Was a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Delaware from 1989 to 2007.
• Named dean of the University of Delaware's College of Engineering in 2000.
• Appointed provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Stony Brook University, New York, in 2007.
Claim to fame: This year, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
• In 1984, he was one of the first to receive a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation.
• In 1995, he won the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award from the American Society of Engineering Education.
• In 1998, he won the American Chemical Society Award in Colloid or Surface Chemistry.
• He is the author or co-author of one edited book and more than 200 papers.
• He holds 10 U.S. patents.
Family: Married to wife, Karen, for 31 years, has 24-year-old and 22-year-old sons.
Last book read: "Our Kind of Traitor" by John le Carré
Hobbies: Woodworking, baseball