Reappointment of Vice Chancellor for Research and Creative Activities Roger Wakimoto

Dear Colleagues:

Following the customary five-year administrative review, Chancellor Block and I are pleased to share that Roger Wakimoto has been reappointed to serve a second term as UCLA’s vice chancellor for research and creative activities. The review committee praised Vice Chancellor Wakimoto for his collaborative leadership style, responsiveness and collegiality, problem-solving acumen and deep-seated commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion.

Since his appointment in 2017, Vice Chancellor Wakimoto has helped our research enterprise navigate a challenging period while continuing to deliver high-quality support to our community of scholars. Perhaps most notably, he helped develop and roll out campus protocols for maintaining research operations during the pandemic, creating structures and processes that prioritized safety while ensuring researchers could continue their work. UCLA has set new campus records in research funding every year of Vice Chancellor Wakimoto’s tenure. External research grants have grown from $1.06 billion in the 2017 fiscal year to an astounding $1.72 billion this past fiscal year.

Vice Chancellor Wakimoto has also helped UCLA advance key initiatives across several domains. Beginning with changing of the name of his office to include “creative activities,” he has significantly expanded his office’s support of North Campus activities. He developed internal structures to ensure his office understands the needs of faculty members in the arts, humanities, social sciences and creative endeavors, and directed internal funding toward the Chancellor’s Arts Initiative and interdisciplinary research efforts. 

In 2020, in partnership with the Institute of American Cultures, Vice Chancellor Wakimoto’s office established the Racial and Social Justice Seed Grants Program, designed to support research into the sources and consequences of racial and social inequities. The seed grant model was expanded to include a set of research projects involving Latinx populations as well as projects promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration.

In 2021, Vice Chancellor Wakimoto helped spearhead the launch of UCLA DataX — a campuswide initiative designed to help faculty, research staff and students leverage data science to advance and transform their work. DataX has been rapidly developing into an important framework for data-related research and teaching at UCLA.

Aside from his regular duties, Vice Chancellor Wakimoto has also provided service on several key committees, including chairing the executive vice chancellor and provost search this past year.

We are grateful to have such a dedicated leader as Vice Chancellor Wakimoto managing our research and creative activities enterprise. Chancellor Block and I look forward to his continued efforts to strengthen and advance our campus’s research ecosystem and to the impact his work will have on UCLA scholars, scholarship and campus initiatives.

Please join me in congratulating Vice Chancellor Wakimoto on his many accomplishments to date and in expressing well wishes to him in his second term.

Sincerely,

Darnell Hunt
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost