Gillian Wilson is the vice chancellor for research, innovation and economic development at the University of California, Merced, and a member of the CITRIS advisory board.
Before she took her current position at UC Merced, Wilson served as senior associate vice chancellor for research and economic development at UC Riverside from 2018–2021, where she had been a professor of physics and astronomy since 2007. She also served as director of the university’s Multidisciplinary Research Building, as the assistant research integrity officer, and as the UC Riverside director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.
At UC Riverside, she held roles as interim divisional dean for physical sciences and mathematics, chair of the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences Executive Committee, chair of the Research and Economic Development Advisory Board, and interim deputy director of the University of California Observatories.
Before joining the University of California, Wilson was a staff scientist at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, and conducted postdoctoral work at Brown University, the University of Hawaii and the Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics. A fellow of the American Physical Society, she earned a doctorate in physics from the University of Durham and a B.Sc. in physics from the University of Glasgow.
Wilson’s research interests include clusters of galaxies, galaxy evolution, infrared astronomy, cosmology, instrumentation, massive galaxies and protoclusters.