The University of Florida Board of Trustees voted unanimously May 26 to select Santa Ono to be the university’s next president.
Ono is expected to succeed current interim President Kent Fuchs. He was announced May 4 as the sole finalist selected by UF’s 15-member Presidential Search Committee.
Pending ratification by the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the State University System of Florida, Ono will become UF’s 14th president.
“I am thankful for, and humbled by, the unanimous support of the Board of Trustees. The energy here at the University of Florida is palpable, and I am eager to join the wonderful students, faculty and staff of the Gator Nation,” Ono said in a news release.
Ono is the immediate past president of the University of Michigan and immediate past chair of the University of Michigan Health Board. He is a researcher recognized for pioneering work on the immune system and eye disease, UF said.
“Santa Ono is precisely the right person to be president of the University of Florida at this moment in its history,” UF Board of Trustees Chair Mori Hosseini said in the release.
“He is a remarkably accomplished scholar and a solidly proven academic leader, and his values align perfectly with ours here in the great state of Florida. Dr. Ono will ensure that merit and scholarship, not ideology, are the gold standards for success, and he will see to it that the University of Florida continues its ascent toward becoming America’s premier public university, bar none.”
Ono received a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from the University of Chicago in 1984 and a Ph.D. in experimental medicine from McGill University in 1991.
He is chair of the Council of Presidents of the Association of Public & Land Grant Universities and is on the boards of the American Council on Education, the Council on Competitiveness and Internet2.
In Jacksonville, UF is planning a graduate center and campus in LaVilla along with its Florida Semiconductor Institute.