LEXINGTON — The University of Kentucky presidential search committee has invited an entrepreneur who is a former UK engineering professor and the provost at the University of Georgia to interview this weekend, according to a published report.

        The UK presidency will become available when Charles Wethington steps down June 30.

        JoEtta Wickliffe, a trustee who is the 13-member committee's chairwoman, said last month that the committee planned to interview between two and six candidates when it meets Saturday in Cincinnati.

        The committee is also expected to interview other candidates.

        Lee Todd, a former UK engineering professor who founded a successful Lexington technology company, and Karen Holbrook, the Georgia provost who is also a respected biologist, were invited to meet with the presidential search committee Saturday, The Courier-Journal of Louisville reported Thursday.

        Mr. Todd could not be reached for comment, and it was unclear whether Ms. Holbrook remained an active candidate.

        Ms. Holbrook said she had not submitted a curriculum vitae, or academic resume, to the search committee or submitted to a formal interview. When asked if she planned on meeting the search committee in Cincinnati on Saturday, Ms. Holbrook said, “Right now I plan to be in Athens on Saturday.” Athens is the location of the University of Georgia.

        Search committee members have expressed concerns that candidates might withdraw if their names were made public before the committee forwards its choice or choices to the board of trustees, which will make the final decision.

        The trustees want to hire a person who can lead the university into the ranks of the top 20 public research universities in the country by 2020, a goal spelled out in the higher education reform law passed in 1997.

        The search committee sifted through nearly 200 names early last fall. In small groups it conducted informal interviews with 23 candidates in November and December.

        Mr. Todd would be an unconventional choice.

        A native of Earlington, Ky., he received his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from UK and went on to receive a master's and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

        As a graduate student at MIT, he received six U.S. patents for high-resolution display technologies. He returned to UK as an engineering professor, but he left to start DataBeam, a company that specializes in software that allows users in different locations to work on the same document or drawing. In 1998 he sold the company to IBM but stayed on to run it.

        Ms. Holbrook is a biologist with a distinguished research career that has focused on human fetal skin development and genetic diseases of the skin.

        She taught biological structure as a University of Washington professor for more than a dozen years before becoming associate dean for scientific affairs at that university's school of medicine in 1985.

        In 1993 she became vice president for research and dean of the graduate school at the University of Florida. There she is credited with helping increase the amount of research dollars procured by university professors.

        Total research awards at Florida grew from $193.5 million in 1993-94 to about $275 million in 1997-98.

        “She's very good at making the case for what research universities do and what they contribute to the state and the nation,” said Joan Lorden, the associate vice provost for research at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and a colleague of Holbrook's.

        Ms. Holbrook has been senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Georgia since 1998.

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