2 UC chancellors nominated

Two women, one a noted cancer researcher and the other an electrical engineering expert and veteran academic administrator, were nominated Friday to become chancellors at UC San Francisco and UC Davis, respectively.

Currently, only one woman, Marye Anne Fox at UC San Diego, heads any of the system’s 10 campuses.

Susan Desmond-Hellmann, 51, who recently headed product development at the biomedical firm Genentech, was named to be the next chancellor at UC San Francisco, which is a medical research school.

Desmond-Hellmann, who earned a medical degree at the University of Nevada, worked on AIDS and cancer-related research in Africa and has taught on hematology-oncology at UC San Francisco. She would replace J. Michael Bishop, who is stepping down after 10 years as chancellor.

Nominated to lead UC Davis was Linda Katehi, 55, who has served as provost of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2006.

Katehi, who earned a doctorate in electrical engineering at UCLA, taught at the University of Michigan and Purdue University, where she was the engineering dean. She would replace Larry Vanderhoef, who will have served 15 years as chancellor.

UC President Mark G. Yudof is scheduled to bring their nominations to the Board of Regents for approval next week for terms that would begin this summer.

Because of concerns about possibly overburdening UC San Diego’s security and medical resources during the swine flu outbreak, however, the regents Friday dropped plans to meet over three days next week at that campus and instead will meet Thursday via telephone conference and at several other locations throughout the state.

UC officials said the regents meeting might have interfered with UC San Diego’s health and police efforts to help manage the flu alerts. They denied that the regents are trying to avoid student protesters, who are expected to turn out to oppose a 9.3% student fee increase up for a vote Thursday.

--

larry.gordon@latimes.com