Michael Purugganan

Michael D. Purugganan (born in 1963) is a Filipino-American biologist and former journalist. He is the Silver Professor of Biology and the interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science of New York University (NYU). Purugganan is also an affiliated faculty member of NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and the NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW). He was the former Dean of Science, and the director of the NYU Center for Genomics and Systems Biology in New York (2010-2012) and Abu Dhabi (2012-2017). From 2022 to 2025, he was the director of 19 Washington Square North, the academic space of NYUAD in New York City

Purugganan is a leading authority on plant molecular evolution and genomics. His major work has focused on the study of domestication and evolution of crop species (including Asian and African rice, date palms, barley, Brassica oleracea and maize).

He was a member of the board of trustees of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2013-2025), and served as the U.S. representative to the Council of Scientists of the Human Frontier Science Program (2013-2017) and the Biological Sciences Advisory Committee for the US National Science Foundation (2014-2017). In 2018, he was appointed as co-chair of the Carnegie-Mellon University Presidential Advisory Board on Science, and in 2021 became the first Scientist-In-Residence at the Asian Institute of Management. Provided by Wikipedia