Jan F. Simek (born April 15, 1953) is an American archaeologist and educator who was the interim president of the University of Tennessee system from 2009–2010. A faculty member in the department of anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Simek's research interests include Paleolithic archaeology, human evolution, quantitative analysis, spatial analysis, archaeology of the southeastern United States, and cave archaeology. He has been involved in the discovery and exploration of numerous “Unnamed Caves”, a naming practice used to protect their location, in the Cumberland Plateau for the past fifteen years. He has been instrumental in the discovery of prehistoric artwork; dating back thousands of years. He has also conducted important research in France at Neanderthal habitation sites. Before his stint as interim president of the University of Tennessee system, he served in leadership and administration positions including department head, interim Director of the School of Art, interim Dean of Architecture and Design, and interim Chancellor of the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Early life and education Simek was born April 15, 1953 in Glen Cove, New York. His mother, Susan Tours Simek, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and worked after the war at the new Radio Free Europe in Germany, where she met her future husband, Vasek. His father, Vasek Simek, was a Czechoslovakia-born New York theater director and Hollywood character actor whose roles included Soviet premiers, Russian chess players, and ambiguously “foreign” scientists. Jan Simek grew up in California. Simek received a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1976 and master's and Ph.D. degrees from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1978 and 1984, respectively. Career Simek began his career research in Europe where he studied Neanderthal habitation sites. He and his colleague, Jean-Phillippe Riguad, began excavating a site in southwestern France, called Grotte XVI, in the mid-1980s. Their research has aided in the understanding of Neanderthal ways of life. Specifically, Simek and Riguad found evidence revealing more sophisticated Neanderthal behavior than what was widely thought possible. Their discovery of well-preserved fireplaces, including ashes of several different types of wood as well as different grasses, within Grotte XVI, suggests that Neanderthals may have been using fire in complex ways. The types of grasses found in the fireplace remains would have had to be carried in from outside the cave, dried, and then used to start fires. Furthermore,