IRVINE : Cicerone Selected Dean of UCI School

A UC Irvine professor has been selected to be dean of UCI’s School of Physical Sciences, university officials announced Thursday.

Ralph Cicerone, chairman of the earth system science department in the physical sciences school, will take over as dean today.

He will succeed Dean Harold Moore, who took part in the University of California systemwide early retirement plan in early May.

“He’s extremely well-known in his area of atmospheric chemistry,” UCI spokesman Scott Nelson said of Cicerone. His list of research projects, education and work experience “reads like ‘War and Peace.’ He’s clearly tops in his field.”

Cicerone joined UCI’s faculty in 1989, after working as a senior scientist and director of the atmospheric chemistry division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., Nelson said.

Cicerone was named founding chairman of geosciences--now earth system science--when he joined the university, Nelson said.

In the early 1970s, Cicerone conducted extensive research into ozone depletion by chlorine gas and concluded that rocket exhaust that churned hydrogen chloride into the stratosphere could damage ozone, Nelson said. He will lead a school known for its work in atmospheric chemistry.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he has also served as president of the American Geophysical Union--the world largest society of earth scientists.

Among students, faculty and staff, Cicerone was most recently known for leading UCI’s Academic Task Force.

The task force examined academic departments and schools at UCI and recommended ways that education at the university could be maintained and improved while cutting the budget.

Cicerone got his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nelson said.

He obtained his master’s degree in electrical engineering, and doctorate in electrical engineering and physics, both from the University of Illinois.

Searchers for a new dean at the physical sciences school considered only candidates from within UCI, Nelson said.

Faculty decided by a 70-1 vote to conduct an internal search because they wanted to avoid costs associated with bringing in outside professors and they believed that qualified candidates already worked for the physical sciences school, he said.