Daniel E. Lemons

Dr. Daniel Lemons has had a thirty-year career at CUNY as a researcher, teacher and administrator. Before coming to the CUNY central office he has served at four CUNY campuses: The City College of New York, the CCNY Center for Worker Education, the CUNY Graduate Center and Lehman College. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, where he became an Assistant Professor before moving to CUNY. His areas of specialty are cardiovascular and comparative physiology.

He moved to CCNY because of his extensive NIH- and NSF-funded research collaboration with faculty members of the Grove School of Engineering in bioheat transfer and vascular mechanics. Dr. Lemons was one of the original participants in the CCNY-based NY Center for Biomedical Engineering which became a CUNY doctoral program and eventually a new Department of Biomedical Engineering. He has also led numerous funded projects for innovation in undergraduate biology education. and has held education leadership positions in the American Physiological Society and the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society. He holds a US patent for hands-on biomechanics teaching models, and invented a mechanical heart simulator, both now used in graduate and undergraduate programs in the US and abroad.

At City College Dr. Lemons served the Biology Department and Science Division in a number of leadership roles and was a member of the CCNY Faculty Council for many years. Dr. Lemons was appointed the Dean of the CCNY Center for Worker Education in 2003. Under his leadership, the Center became the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and it was relocated to a new campus in the financial district. In 2007 he joined the CUNY Graduate Center in the newly-created position of Associate Provost and Dean for Doctoral Science Programs, where he led a comprehensive reorganization of the CUNY doctoral bench science programs. Dr. Lemons returned to CCNY to become the Dean of Science and then the acting Provost and Sr. Vice President for Academic Affairs. During that time, he helped found a new interdisciplinary masters program in Sustainable Urban Development and was the administrative lead for CCNY’s entry in the 2011 USDOE Solar Decathlon in Washington, DC. He is a Professor Emeritus of Biology at CCNY.

In 2018 Dr. Lemons became Interim Dean of Academic Affairs and Executive in Charge of Academic Affairs at Lehman College, and from July 2019 thru June 2021 served as Interim President of Lehman College.

From 2012-2013 Dr. Lemons was on leave from CUNY and co-founded an institute that focused on global energy poverty through energy development projects, primarily in Haiti. He helped found the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center’s animal care and use program and oversaw it from 2014-2017.

Dr. Lemons was an elected trustee in the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, from 2015-2020. His portfolio on the Board of Trustees was sustainability and the environment. In that capacity he led numerous sustainability projects and worked with Hudson River conservation organizations, including Scenic Hudson and Riverkeeper, in efforts to preserve the Hudson River ecosystem. His engagement on the environment and climate change also included serving on the Committee on Sustainable Development of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.