The Vice-Chancellor provides executive leadership to the University and takes overall responsibility for delivering the ANU Strategy. She chairs key management committees including the University Senior Management Group and the ANU Executive, and is also a member of the ANU governing body, the Council.
The Vice-Chancellor is the University's primary representative to government and wider society, and to national and international organisations. Genevieve Bell was appointed the 13th Vice-Chancellor of ANU in January 2024. Genevieve is the University’s first female Vice-Chancellor. Genevieve holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University and is a renowned anthropologist, technologist, and futurist, having spent more than two decades in Silicon Valley helping guide Intel's product development and social science and design research capabilities. She is best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice and technology development and for being an important voice in the global debates around artificial intelligence and human society. In 2017, Genevieve returned to Australia and established the 3A Institute at ANU, in collaboration with CSIRO's Data61, with the mission of building a new branch of engineering to take AI-enabled cyber-physical systems safely, sustainably and responsibly scale. In 2021, she became the inaugural Director of the new ANU School of Cybernetics, which builds on the foundational work of the 3A Institute and seeks to establish cybernetics as an important tool for navigating major societal transformations, through capability building, policy development and safe, sustainable and responsible approaches to new systems. In addition to her roles at the ANU and Intel, Genevieve was also a Non-Executive Director of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia Board (January 2019-October 2023) and is currently a Member of the Prime Minister's National Science and Technology Council, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH), Florence Violet McKenzie Chair, SRI International Engelbart Distinguished Fellow, member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) AI Council and an Officer of the Order of Australia.