Robert Birgeneau

Robert Birgeneau was born in Toronto in 1942, and earned his PhD in physics from Yale University. After working at AT&T Bell Laboratories for several years, he served as a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for twenty-five years. In 2000 he was appointed to president of the University of Toronto and just four years later he was named Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. Entering this position just as the state of California was beginning to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from the University of California's budget, Birgeneau fought successfully to preserve Berkeley's position as one of the world’s top-tier universities. Among his other major initiatives was adopting the school’s 2011 “Middle Class Access Plan” aimed at keeping tuition affordable for middle-class families. Updated 2012