Researcher Fills Key Post at UCI : Appointment: A key part of Frederic Yui-Ming Wan’s duties will be to keep grant funds flowing to the university.

Frederic Yui-Ming Wan, a professor of mathematics and applied mathematics at the University of Washington, has been named vice chancellor of research and dean of graduate studies at UC Irvine.

UCI Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening praised Wan’s background in research, saying his help will be critical to the university’s efforts to advance its academic stature.

“Fred Wan is a fine administrator and scholar well-known for his applied mathematical research,” Wilkening said in a prepared statement. “His role is to help faculty direct research toward new funding sources and help move UCI into the top 50 research universities in the country.”

Wan’s appointment, still subject to approval by the UC Board of Regents, is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.

At UCI, Wan will be responsible for research policy, allocation of campus research and graduate fellowship funds and contracts. He will also be responsible for grant development. The university receives more than $100 million annually in outside research support.

Part of the challenge of his new job will be to keep the research funds flowing to UCI in an increasingly competitive market, Wan said in a prepared statement.

“Because of increasing demands and more targeted approaches, today’s research funding is more complex than in the past,” he said. “Unless we position ourselves to tap new funding sources, we will not be able to increase our research activities.”

Wan, 58, is a native of Shanghai, China, and grew up in Saigon, Los Angeles and Seattle. He is a graduate of MIT and is a former faculty member there as well as the University of British Columbia.

The author of more than 100 research papers and two graduate textbooks, Wan is an internationally known expert in the theory of plates and shells, a field of structural mechanics. Wan is also director for the Division of Mathematical Sciences at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va.