Liesl Folks is an Australian engineer known for her research on spin-electronic

quantum computing A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of wave-particle duality, both particles and waves, and quantum computing takes advantage of this behavior using s ...

. She holds a full professorship and has been a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...

since 2019. She served as the provost for the University of Arizona from 2019 to 2023 and is currently the Vice President for Semiconductor Strategy.

Early life and education

Folks, a native of Australia, holds a BSc (Hons) and a PhD, both in physics, from the

University of Western Australia University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Crawley, Western Australia, Crawley, a suburb in the City of Perth local government area. UW ...

, as well as an MBA from Cornell University. Her PhD thesis investigated the characterization of ferromagnetic materials by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Folks completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Western Australia in the AFM characterization of nanoscale permanent magnetic materials.

Research and career

After serving as a researcher from 1998 to 2013 at IBM and Hitachi, in 2013 after receiving an MBA from Cornell University, Folks was appointed Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the

University at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo (commonly referred to as UB, University at Buffalo, and sometimes SUNY Buffalo) is a public university, public research university in Buffalo, New York, Buffalo and Amherst, New York, United States. ...

. That year she was also appointed in the voluntary role of President of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

Magnetics Society, a professional society. At the University at Buffalo, she was committed to building educational programs that align with students’ and society’s needs. She served as Dean of Engineering when two new departments were launched at the University of Buffalo; materials design (a joint initiative at UB between to the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences and the College of Arts and Sciences) and engineering education. In 2019, she joined the

as a professor of electrical and computer engineering, where she was also appointed senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. She resigned as provost in 2023, following the death of a professor on campus. Folks is a co-inventor on 12 U.S. patents and is a co-author on approximately 60 peer-reviewed articles that have attracted more than 13,300 citations, and reviewed candidate theses for the award of Doctor of Philosophy. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. In 2024, Folks received a Distinguished Service Award from the IEEE Magnetics Society. Folks was elected a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

in March 2025.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Folks, Liesl Living people Year of birth missing (living people) University of Arizona faculty 21st-century Australian women engineers University of Western Australia alumni Cornell University alumni 21st-century American women academics 21st-century American academics 21st-century American women engineers Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors 21st-century Australian engineers 21st-century American engineers