Eric Isaacs

Dr. Eric D. Isaacs has been president of Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) since July 1, 2025. For over a century, the Research Corporation foundation has supported pioneering research in the physical sciences and adjacent fields and has fostered generations of scientific leaders. He is also president-elect for the American Association for the Advancement of Science and will begin his presidency in 2027.

Before joining RCSA, Isaacs served as president of the Carnegie Institute for Science from 2018 to 2024. During his tenure at Carnegie, he led the strategic reorganization of the 120-year-old independent research institution to strengthen its programs in astronomy, cosmology, biology and the geophysical and planetary sciences with an emphasis on interdisciplinary research capabilities. Previously, as Provost and Executive Vice President for Research, Innovation and National Laboratories at the University of Chicago, he oversaw more than $1.5 billion in sponsored research, including forefront science and engineering at the University of Chicago Medical Center, Argonne National Laboratory, Fermilab, and the Marine Biological Laboratory. He was also the Robert A. Milliken professor of physics. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, he was Lab Director of Argonne National Laboratory.

Isaacs has served on several non-profit Boards including four DOE National Labs, the Science Philanthropy Alliance, as well as the technical advisory committee for Energys, Inc. a hydrogen-fuel startup in Australia.  He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and the American Physical Society.

Isaacs received his B.A. in Physics from Beloit College in Wisconsin, his Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Bell Laboratories. He remained at Bell Labs for fifteen years as a Member of Technical Staff and as the Director of the Semiconductor Physics and Materials Physics departments. His scientific interests range from astrophysics to condensed matter physics and energy technologies. As an experimental physicist, he studied novel electronic and magnetic materials with a focus on creating images of novel, nanoscale phenomena. He developed several modern synchrotron-based X-ray scattering techniques, including magnetic X-ray diffraction, inelastic X-ray scattering, and X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy.