Scientist Michael Purugganan named interim dean at NYU Arts & Science
In a May 27 memorandum to the Arts & Science community, NYU President Linda Mills and Provost Georgina Dopico announced the appointment of Michael Purugganan as Interim Dean of Arts & Science:
“We are delighted to announce the appointment of Michael Purugganan, Silver Professor of Biology and formerly dean of science, as interim dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, effective July 1, 2025.
“Michael brings a deep familiarity with Arts and Science to the deanship, as well as a reputation as a highly productive and respected scholar, a skilled and experienced leader, a collaborative and respected colleague, and an upholder of academic excellence.
“Many of you already know Michael well. A member of NYU’s Department of Biology faculty since 2006 and an affiliate faculty member at NYU Abu Dhabi and at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, he has served in a number of important and prominent positions: as dean of science in Arts and Science from 2012 to 2019; as director of the NYU Center for Genomics and Systems Biology from 2010 to 2012; as the founding co-director of the NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Genomics and Systems Biology from 2012 to 2017; and as academic director of 19 Washington Square North from 2022 to the present.
“He has also been active in the wider academic sphere, serving as a trustee of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a member of the National Science Foundation Biological Sciences Advisory Committee, and the U.S. representative to the Council of Scientists of the international Human Frontiers Science Program.
Michael is well known as a leader in the field of plant evolutionary genomics. Recognition of his scholarly work includes being elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and corresponding member of the National Academy of Science and Technology of the Philippines. He has been a Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and this last year was a visiting fellow at All Souls College at the University of Oxford.
“With so many challenges confronting higher education, we are fortunate to have such an able, seasoned, and esteemed academic leader willing to step in and take on this important assignment. We are very grateful to Michael, and have every confidence in his stewardship of Arts and Science.”
In a 2012 interview with The FilAm, Michaelsaid he took up Chemistry at UP Diliman and became features editor at the Collegian in the turbulent 1980s. When opposition leader Benigno Aquino was assassinated in 1983, Michael led the coverage and published two special issues about social injustice and the unraveling of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship.
With a bachelor’s degree, he left the Philippines to pursue his master’s in Chemistry at Columbia University. Realizing he wasn’t all that enthused about chemistry, he looked around for other disciplines that would be “potentially useful” in case he had to go back to the Philippines. Why not Plant Biology, thinking he could use the knowledge to study rice, possibly at the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos. He got a PH.D. in Botany from the University of Georgia, followed by postdoctoral research at the University of California in San Diego, where he studied plant evolution. After UCSD, he applied for a research position at UP, but was told the only available position was teaching.
While evaluating his options, he was offered to teach Genetics at North Carolina State University. He stayed there for 10 years, leaving as a chair professor. He joined NYU in 2006, bringing with him his entire laboratory and a staff of about six people. Purugganan Laboratory is known as the “hub of science” in the heart of New York City.
