Eric Garfunkel

Vice President for Global Affairs

Phone: 848-932-3077

Email: vp@global.rutgers.edu

Location: 
Rutgers Global
30 College Avenue
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1283

Roles and Responsibilities 

• Responsible for the university’s internationalization efforts  

• Oversees study abroad and global education 

• Supervises services for international students and scholars  

• Supports international partnerships and cross-cultural and global programming 

Biography

Eric Garfunkel, Ph.D., is vice president for global affairs, leading Rutgers Global, a unit of University Academic Affairs and Rutgers’ university-wide international office that promotes global engagement and understanding. Dr. Garfunkel also is a distinguished professor of chemistry and physics.

As head of Rutgers Global, Garfunkel is responsible for the university’s internationalization efforts, including study abroad, cross-cultural and global programming, development and support of international relations and partnerships, and services for international students and scholars.

During his almost four decades at Rutgers, Garfunkel played a leading role in the formation and operation of two multidisciplinary nanoscience and technology centers that focus on atomic scale design and manipulation of materials and devices. He also served as chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. His recent research has focused on the synthesis and characterization of materials and devices that can be used for alternative energy and nanoelectronics. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Semiconductor Research Corporation.

Garfunkel has held visiting professorships in Germany, China, Italy, and France. He is deeply involved in a range of science diplomacy projects, including developing global partnerships and research collaborations with African universities, and he has helped lead international activities of the Materials Research Society for two decades. Garfunkel earned a PhD in chemistry from UC Berkeley and a B.S. from Haverford College. Before coming to Rutgers, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, and at Fudan University in Shanghai, China.