Dr. Clive Woods

Dr. R.C. Woods moved to the University of South Alabama in 2016 as Associate Dean of Engineering responsible for research and graduate affairs. He was born in Leicester, England, and studied at New College in the University of Oxford where he earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, and the Doctor of Philosophy degree for his original research on magnetic resonance and related phenomena in rare earth metal alloys conducted at the University of Oxford’s world-famous Clarendon Laboratory. While still a research student he was invited by the Clarendon Laboratory to tutor their postgraduate advanced quantum mechanics course. Next he worked on surface-acoustic wave signal-processing devices as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the University of Oxford’s Engineering Science Department. Following this, he was Senior Scientist at Plessey Research (Caswell) Ltd., Towcester, specializing in semiconductor lasers and LED systems.

He was then a Lecturer and subsequently Senior Lecturer (positions widely regarded as equivalent to Assistant and Associate Professor respectively in the U.S.A.) in Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Sheffield. During this period, his research mostly concerned compound semiconductor devices. In 1989 he was awarded a British Association Fellowship and worked temporarily at the BBC Radio Science Unit in London, for several years he served as Associate Editor of the IEE Electronics and Communication Engineering Journal, and in 1995 he was Professeur Invité at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon, France. He was also a co-founder of the Sheffield MEMS Unit. He was appointed Full Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, in 2002. Moving again in 2006, he became the most successful Department Chairman in his Department’s history when under his leadership his Department achieved its best-ever performance before or since. After he witnessed repeated unprofessional and unethical behavior by senior faculty and administrators at that institution, in 2020 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers appointed him to its Ethics and Member Conduct Committee which he Chaired in 2022 and 2023. He is currently a member of the IEEE Conduct Review Committee and Vice-Chair from 2025.

In 2010 he was appointed Japan Program Director in the Office of International Science and Engineering at the world’s most prestigious research funding agency, the National Science Foundation (NSF) located then in Arlington, Virginia, and subsequently took additional responsibility for the U.S. collaborative basic research programs in Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Mongolia, and Taiwan. He also led the NSF CNIC program for catalyzing new international collaborations, and was a member of the NSF Optics and Photonics Roadmap working group and the International Science and Engineering Strategic Planning group. For his work at NSF he received the NSF Director’s Award for Collaborative Integration recognizing his “exceptional teamwork in representing a model for a truly collaborative activity across the Foundation involving science, administration, and science diplomacy.”

In 2005 the University of Oxford announced that he was a recipient of the rarely-awarded D.Sc. Higher Doctorate, acknowledging his distinguished research achievements in solid-state device engineering and other fields over many years, and in 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (formerly the IEE). His current research interests include novel solid-state devices and device modeling; he has authored more than 130 peer-reviewed research publications (plus a number of patents) in these and related fields. He is an invited member of the international awarding committee for Marie Curie Fellowships supported by the European Commission in Brussels and of multiple research panels at the National Science Foundation now in Alexandria, Virginia. He is a member of the Editorial Board for several prestigious peer-reviewed research journals including IET Nanodielectrics and Springer Nature/Light: Science & Applications, and is a Program Evaluator for the Engineering Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology.

Also an accomplished pianist, he has played at many public concerts in both Europe and North America, including France, Germany, New York City, Washington D.C., Maryland, the north of England, and London. He is particularly well-known as a soloist and as an accompanist for operatic and choral works. He has recorded two commercially-produced CDs, and continues to perform regularly in the U.S.A. and in the U.K.. A theme he wrote was used in February 2010 as the basis of an improvisation by pianist Robert Levin at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore.