This appointment is pending approval from the Board of Trustees at the June 26 meeting. Gage will also be presenting the gift, grant and contract report at the meeting.

Gage currently serves as the assistant vice president for research and innovation. He joined the MSU Office of the Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation in 2007, after working in research and development in the private sector for six years.

As assistant vice president, he was the primary coordinator for the MSU Global Impact Initiative, a campus-wide effort to hire more than 100 new faculties in STEM and biomedical research.

He also represented the vice president in oversight committees for other research initiatives, including the Institute for Quantitative Health Sciences and Engineering, the Institute for Integrative Toxicology, the Drug Discovery Initiative and the Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization Hub.

Gage was previously a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. His research focused on metabolic engineering of plant biochemical pathways.

He came to MSU as a postdoctoral fellow at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Lab and later served as Director of the MSU Mass Spectrometry Facility.

Gage earned a doctorate in botany from the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor and Master of Science in biology from Florida State University.

In an email to executives, Stanley said information about the formal search for the next vice president for research and innovation will be shared in the coming months.