A champion of high-quality, accessible public higher education, Gene Block has served as chancellor of UCLA since 2007. Under Chancellor Block’s leadership, UCLA has greatly enhanced its position as a national leader in enrolling undergraduates who come from low-income backgrounds, have been traditionally underrepresented in higher education or are among the first in their families to go to college. During his tenure, UCLA has also become the most applied-to university in the nation, has advanced in rankings in nearly every discipline, has significantly deepened its international partnerships and engagement with alumni, and now receives more than $1.6 billion annually in research grants. Chancellor Block holds faculty appointments in psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the UCLA College. Before becoming the leader of UCLA, Chancellor Block spent 29 years at the University of Virginia, where he was most recently vice president and provost.