Bernard Kippelen serves as Vice Provost for International Initiatives and holds the Steven A. Denning Chair for Global Engagement at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also the Joseph M. Pettit professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Kippelen joined Georgia Tech in 2003 as a member of the faculty with the rank of professor. From 2011-2019 he served as Director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta. He is a co-founder and co-President of the Institut Lafayette, an innovation platform located on Georgia Tech’s European site Georgia Tech Europe (Metz, France).

As Vice Provost for International Initiatives at Georgia Tech (since 2021), he oversees the international strategy, global campuses, actively participates in philanthropic engagement, corporate development, and partnerships that connect research and education worldwide. This role has provided him with extensive experience in fiscal management (> $38 M), risk oversight, and talent development (supervising 100+ staff members).

He was born in Guebwiller, raised in Soultz, Alsace, France, and is a US and French citizen. He studied at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg (aka University of Strasbourg) where he received a Maitrise in Solid-State Physics in 1985, and a Doctorate in Nonlinear Optics in 1990. From 1990 to 1997 he was Chargé de Recherches at the French CNRS. In 1991, he joined the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona as a postdoctoral fellow, held several research faculty positions, and joined the faculty in 1998 as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2001.

His most impactful research contributions are in the field of organic optoelectronics, including the development of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), organic field-effect transistors (OFETs), organic photovoltaics, and organic photodiodes. He holds 26 issued patents and has co-authored over 700 scientific communications, including over 300 peer-reviewed journal publications and 14 book chapters. His work has received over 34,000 citations and his h-index is currently 94 (Google Scholar). He served as chair and co-chair of numerous international conferences on organic optoelectronic materials and devices. He has graduated 30 Ph.D. students and advised 23 postdoctoral fellows. He taught passionately many courses both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, both in the classroom and online. He contributed to curriculum development at the frontiers of optics, physics, engineering, materials science, and chemistry. The numerous teaching awards and accolades he received from his past students are a source of pride.

Kippelen is the recipient of an NSF-Career Award (2000), a 3M Corporation Young Faculty Award (2000), a FlexTech Alliance Award (2012), a Printed Electronics USA Award (2012), the Georgia Tech Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activity Award (2014), and the Georgia Tech Steven A. Denning Faculty Award for Global Engagement (2019). His research was featured in numerous media outlets, including Forbes and Reuters. He was elected a Fellow of Optica (formerly known as the Optical Society of America) (2006), a Fellow of SPIE (2007), and bestowed the title of Knight of the French National Order of Merit (2023). He served as a Deputy Editor for Optics Express (2009-2012) and was the founding Editor of Energy Express (2010-2012).