About the Vice President

Vice President for Research Stacey Patterson oversees Florida State University’s research operation, which has more than $320 million annually in expenditures and more than 50 prominent research centers and institutes.

Patterson has spent the past 16 years in various positions in the University of Tennessee system. Starting in a joint role as a research scientist and a licensing associate, she ultimately rose through the ranks to be named the vice president for research, outreach, and economic development in 2017. She was the first woman to serve in this position in the history of the UT system.

Patterson earned her bachelor’s degree from UT Knoxville in biological sciences, followed by a master’s degree in environmental health science from East Tennessee State University and a doctorate in microbiology from UT Knoxville.

Following her graduate work, Patterson spent three years in a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of South Florida. She has secured funding from NOAA, the U.S. Army, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, and several private sector partners as a principal investigator and has been a contributor on several U.S. patents in the area of sensor development and cancer imaging. Patterson is also one of four co-founders of 490 BioTech, a Knoxville-based startup company.

In her position for the UT system, had broad responsibilities related to Oak Ridge National laboratory and served as the primary liaison to Battelle Memorial Institute, UTs’ partner in the management of ORNL, where she helped align the lab and university interests with innovation across the state.

Throughout her career, Patterson has played a significant role in securing extramural funding and developing partnerships and broad coalitions to advance innovation. She led a $62.5 million solar initiative that was a joint research effort among UT, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, industry and the West Tennessee Solar Farm, one of the largest solar generating facilities in the Southeast. She also helped lead the creation of the Composites Institute, a $259 million public-private partnership that crosses multiple states and includes more than 130 member institutions from industry, academia and government collaborating on the nation’s advances composites ecosystem.

At FSU, Patterson oversees the Office for the Vice President for Research, which employees 125 full time staff and is home to multiple administrative units. These include federal relations, commercialization and the Council of Research and Creativity and others. The office also has direct oversight of five research centers: the Center for Advanced Power Systems, the Coastal and Marine Laboratory, the Florida Center for Reading Research, the High-Performance Materials Institute, and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.