Charles Lee Isbell Jr.

Charles Lee Isbell Jr. has been UW–Madison’s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs since August of 2023. He previously served as the dean and John P. Imlay, Jr. Chair of the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Provost Isbell is a computationalist, researcher, educator, and advocate for access in higher education. His research focuses on using machine learning to enable autonomous agents to engage in lifelong learning in the presence of thousands of other intelligent agents — some of whom may be humans — with an emphasis on building systems responsibly and inclusively.

The provost has also worked extensively on education reform. He is a strong believer in the role of higher education in general — and broad, research-focused universities in particular — in providing opportunities for deep engagement in what it means to be an active and productive citizen.

Provost Isbell is a nationally recognized expert whose work has been featured in both technical collections and the popular media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Netflix. He has provided congressional testimony on both technical and educational matters.

He is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery as well as an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also an award-winning teacher who has been recognized internationally for his education work, and he is the founding executive director of the Constellations Center for Equity in Computing.

He received his BS degree from Georgia Tech and continued his education at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. After earning his PhD there, he joined AT&T Labs/Research. He later returned to Georgia Tech to join the faculty of the College of Computing, becoming dean in 2019.