Marie Lynn Miranda

Dr. Marie Lynn Miranda became Chancellor at the University of Illinois Chicago in July 2023. She is leading the university’s efforts around student success, enhanced research infrastructure, progress on key Chicago policy issues, partnerships with the corporate, non-profit, and government sectors, and building a positive work environment for all UIC faculty and staff. She is deeply committed to the social justice mission of the university. Miranda is an accomplished and recognized data science scholar and communicator with over 150 peer-reviewed publications focused on the nexus of health, education, equity, and the environment, with over $65 million in federal, corporate, and foundation funding. Miranda specializes in spatial analytic approaches, especially targeted at understanding how the environment shapes health and wellbeing among children and those from low resource communities. Miranda is a leader in the rapidly evolving field of geospatial health informatics and has developed global cultural and scientific competence through extensive work on four continents. Miranda founded and continues to lead the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative (CEHI), a research, education, and outreach program committed to fostering environments where all people can prosper. CEHI’s work leverages research, stakeholder engagement, and advocacy to effect environmental policy change. CEHI received the 2008 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Award. Miranda has held academic leadership positions at the University of Michigan (Dean of the School of Natural Resources and the Environment), Rice University (Provost), and the University of Notre Dame (Provost). In these roles, she implemented strategic choices for targeted university investments, significantly advanced diversity objectives related to faculty and students, delivered on critical fundraising targets, and demonstrated leadership excellence through effective engagement of a broad stakeholder group in strategic planning, as well as through emergency management during and after Hurricane Harvey and throughout the COVID-19 global pandemic. Miranda is a Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of Duke University, where she earned her A.B. in mathematics and economics and was named a Truman Scholar. She has a Ph.D. and M.A. from Harvard University, where she held a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of Sigma Xi. She serves on the boards of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Environmental Defense Fund.