University Names New Dean, Executive Vice President

Princeton announced that a pair of newcomers will be taking over key administrative posts in the new academic year. Peter Schiffer, a professor of applied physics and physics at Yale University, will be the next dean for research, and Katie Callow-Wright, the executive vice president at the University of Chicago, will join Princeton in the same role.

Peter Schiffer

Photo: L. Brian Stauffer

Schiffer, the director for strategic projects at Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, succeeds Pablo Debenedetti, a professor of chemical and biological engineering who served as dean for the last 10 years. Prior to his work at Yale, Schiffer served in administrative roles at Penn State and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is slated to become dean on Aug. 28 and will join the physics faculty as well.

Callow-Wright will oversee campus planning, operations, and infrastructure at Princeton in her new position, which is the University’s top nonacademic post. She will begin on July 24, taking over for Treby Williams ’84, who will continue working as adviser to the president through 2024. Callow-Wright has spent the past two decades in senior administrative roles at the University of Chicago.