Santa J. Ono, Ph.D., is president of the University of Michigan and an experienced vision researcher recognized for pioneering work on the immune system and eye disease. He chairs the University of Michigan Health Board, Fulbright Canada, and the University Climate Change Coalition and is an honorary Chairperson of the Japan America Society of Michigan and Southwestern Ontario. He is a member of the United States-Japan Foundation Board of Trustees.

In higher education, he is the Chair of the Council of Presidents of the Association of Public & Land Grant Universities (APLU) and serves on the Boards of the American Council on Education (ACE), the Council on Competitiveness and Internet2. 

He joined U-M from the University of British Columbia, where he served as president and vice chancellor. He was Chair of the U15 Group of Canadian Universities and the Research Universities of British Columbia (RUCBC) and served as Advisor to the Premier on Innovation and Technology. Prior to UBC, he was president and provost of the University of Cincinnati and served on the Board of the Ohio Third Frontier, the state’s technology-based economic development program.

Ono served as senior vice provost and deputy to the provost at Emory University. He taught at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and University College London. He earned his B.A. in biological sciences from the University of Chicago in 1984, and a Ph.D. (with Honors) in experimental medicine from McGill University in 1991.  He was inducted into Sigma Xi.

As a scholar he served for many years on review panels for the National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust and has advised biotech, pharmaceutical companies and governments on science and scientific policy. He served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the Journal of Immunology, Immunology and the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

He has been recognized with awards such as the Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship, the American Diabetes Association Career Award, Arthritis Foundation Investigator Award, Roche Award and the Pharmacia International Award in Allergy Research.

He has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Inventors, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has been awarded multiple honorary doctorates and was inducted into the Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars.