Dr. Santa J. Ono

Santa J. Ono PhD FRSC FCAHS is the 15th President & Vice-Chancellor of the University of British Columbia.

Installed as President and Vice-Chancellor in 2016, he also serves as Chair of the U15 Group of Universities, on the Board of Directors of Universities Canada, and as Past Chair of Research Universities of British Columbia. He is also a member of the Boards of Fulbright and MITACS. He has also served on the Boards of the American Council on Education and the Council on Competitiveness and as Chief Innovation Advisor to the Province of British Columbia.

Prior to his appointment as President and Vice-Chancellor of UBC, Dr. Ono served as the 28th President of the University of Cincinnati and Senior Vice-Provost and Deputy to the Provost at Emory University.

He was appointed by Governor John Kasich to lead Ohio’s Biopharmaceutical Task Force and to the Board of the Ohio Third Frontier – Ohio’s technology-based economic development program, when he served as President of the University of Cincinnati.

A molecular immunologist educated at the University of Chicago and McGill, Dr. Ono has taught at Johns Hopkins, Harvard University and University College London. He has advised national and regional governments on higher education and mental health. He has also advised companies such as GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Novartis on R&D.

He has served on a number of editorial boards, including Immunology, The Journal of Biological Chemistry, The Journal of Immunology and The Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology.

Dr. Ono has been inducted as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, USA and the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars.

He holds Honorary Doctorates from Chiba University and the Vancouver School of Theology and is a recipient of the Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award from the American Council on Education, the Professional Achievement Award from University of Chicago, a Grand Challenges Hero Award from UCLA and the NAAAP 100 Award from the National Association of Asian American Professionals.