Board & Staff
Dr. Santa J. Ono
Santa J. Ono, Ph.D., is the 15th president of the University of Michigan. He began a five-year term on Oct. 14, 2022.
A recognized leader in higher education in the United States and Canada, President Ono is an experienced vision researcher whose pioneering work in experimental medicine focuses on the immune system and eye disease. At U-M he is professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, and microbiology and immunology in the Medical School, and molecular, cellular and developmental biology in the College of Literature, Sciences and the Arts.
President Ono currently serves as the chair of the U-M Health Board, the chair of Fulbright Canada, the chair of the University Climate Change Coalition (UC3), and is an honorary Chairperson of the Japan America Society of Michigan and Southwestern Ontario.
He also serves on a range of other boards including the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors, the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the American Council on Education, the Council on Competitiveness, the Detroit Economic Club, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation Board of Trustees.
He has been appointed by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to serve on the Executive Committee of Michigan Economic Development Corporation and the Growing Michigan Together Council.
Dr. Ono is a second-generation Japanese American who maintains strong ties to family in Japan. His grandfather, Akira Ono, was governor of Chiba Prefecture, and he has received an honorary doctorate from Chiba University.
He was born in Vancouver, where his father was teaching at the time. Dr. Ono joined U-M from the University of British Columbia, where he served as president and vice chancellor since 2016.
Prior to his appointment at UBC, he was president of the University of Cincinnati, where he also served as professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
Dr. Ono has served as senior vice provost and deputy to the provost at Emory University. He also has taught at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University and University College London.
He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, USA and the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. In 2022, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
He earned his B.A. in biological sciences from the University of Chicago in 1984, and a Ph.D. in experimental medicine from McGill University in 1991.