Gregory F. Ball

Gregory F. Ball, PhD, was named vice president for research, overseeing the joint research enterprise of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), in early 2022.

From 2014 to 2022, Ball served as dean of UMCP’s College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, a large and academically complex college with more than 5,000 undergraduate students and more than 800 master’s and doctoral students across 10 departments and multiple centers. Ball prioritized diversity and inclusion in faculty and staff hiring during his tenure as dean. He also focused on modernizing research training and expanding experiential learning opportunities and career preparation services for all students in the college.

Throughout his deanship, Ball maintained an active research lab in UMCP’s Department of Psychology. His research examines seasonal changes in the brains and behavior of songbirds to understand how hormones and external environmental stimuli affect behavior. A highly accomplished scientist, Ball has amassed more than 200 research publications and continues to receive research grant support from the National Institutes of Health.

Before joining UMCP, Ball was a faculty member in the Johns Hopkins University’s (JHU) Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences for 23 years. He also served as the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ dean of research and graduate education from 2008 to 2010. At JHU, he held joint appointments in the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and its Division of Reproductive Biology as well as in the School of Medicine’s Department of Neuroscience.

Ball earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Columbia University and a PhD in psychobiology from the Institute of Animal Behavior at Rutgers University. He completed his postdoctoral work in comparative neuroendocrinology and ethology at Rockefeller University. He also has held faculty appointments at Rockefeller and Boston College.