Santa J. Ono

Global President

Santa J. Ono is an immunologist and university leader who became global president of the Ellison Institute of Technology in August 2025, responsible for the institute's operations worldwide and working with its Oxford president, Sir John Bell, to expand the science programmes on the Oxford campus. Established with backing from Larry Ellison, the institute works on health and medical science, generative biology, food security and sustainable agriculture, clean energy, and artificial intelligence and robotics. Born in Vancouver in 1962, he took a bachelor's degree in biological sciences at the University of Chicago in 1984 and a PhD in experimental medicine at McGill University in 1991. He held faculty posts at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, University College London and Emory University, where he became a vice provost, and his research addressed immunology, macular degeneration and allergic inflammation. He was provost and then president of the University of Cincinnati from 2012 to 2016, president of the University of British Columbia from 2016 to 2022, and the fifteenth president of the University of Michigan from October 2022 to May 2025.