David Vanden Bout

Dr. David Vanden Bout is interim executive vice president and provost of The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to assuming the post in 2025, he served as dean of the College of Natural Sciences. Vanden Bout oversees implementation of the academic mission for the University. 

While dean, he supported more than 11,000 undergraduate students, 1,500 residential graduate students and more than 5,000 online master's students, along with 700 faculty, 1,200 staff and numerous stakeholders across a wide range of subject areas in the sciences, mathematics and technology. With research expenditures in excess of $190 million, the college that Dean Vanden Bout led spans campuses across Texas, including the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas and the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis. 

Dr. Vanden Bout is the winner of multiple research, teaching and leadership awards, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a Cottrell Scholar award, a Research Innovation Award, a President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award, a UT Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award, the Precursor’s President’s Award and GlobalMindED’s Inclusive Leader Award. 

Dr. Vanden Bout earned his B.S. in chemistry from Duke University in 1990 doing undergraduate research with  Richard MacPhail. He earned a Ph.D in chemical physics in 1995 from The University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Mark Berg. He went on to work as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Paul Barbara's laboratory at the University of Minnesota. He started as an assistant professor in the then-Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Austin in 1997. He was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2003 and the rank of full professor in 2013. He became the associate dean for undergraduate education in the College of Natural Sciences in 2014 and senior associate dean in 2019, and he served as interim dean in 2018 and 2021, before serving as dean from 2021-2025.