Our New President

Mung Chiang, former president of Purdue University, took the reins as Northwestern’s 18th president on July 1. 

Chiang assumed the role following an extensive global search led by representatives of Northwestern’s Board of Trustees and select faculty, staff, students and alumni. He succeeds the University’s 17th president, Michael Schill, who stepped down in September 2025. 

“I am humbled and excited to serve the Northwestern University community,” Chiang said in a video message after the University announced his appointment in May. “My first priority is to listen and learn about Northwestern’s distinct culture and this community of scholarly and creative minds.” 

Chiang has built a reputation as an innovative researcher, an award-winning educator and an exceptional leader in higher education. 

He arrives at Northwestern after serving as Purdue’s 13th president, a role he assumed in 2023. (He first joined Purdue, one of the nation’s largest public research universities, in 2017 as dean of the College of Engineering.) During his tenure as president, Purdue achieved a record-high graduation rate and admitted its most selective class of students. The university had its most successful fundraising year and received its largest federal research grants and largest industry research grant in school history. Purdue invested in 27 construction or major renovations projects while freezing tuition. The university also launched its first urban campus in Indianapolis and secured $3.9 billion in investments to build an AI memory chip advanced packaging facility at Purdue Research Park. 

On his first day as Northwestern president, Mung Chiang met some of his new Evanston neighbors and helped serve ice cream during a World Cup watch party at the Robert Crown Community Center. Credit: Shane Collins

Chiang is Northwestern’s first Asian American president. A first-generation immigrant from China, he studied at Stanford University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and mathematics as well as a master’s degree and doctorate in electrical engineering. 

He joined the Princeton University faculty in 2003 and taught electrical engineering, computer science, and applied and computational mathematics for nearly 14 years. 

Widely recognized as a pioneer in edge computing — a method of localizing data processing to improve computing speed and efficiency — Chiang has conducted research on network deployment and optimization. He founded the Princeton EDGE Lab in 2009 and is co-founder of several startups and industry consortia. As of June, he held 26 U.S. patents, most of which are licensed for network deployment. 

Chiang has garnered national recognition and numerous distinguished awards for his work, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Founders Medal, a National Science Foundation Alan T. Waterman Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2020 he became the first engineer to serve as a nonpartisan science and technology adviser to the U.S. secretary of state, and in 2024 he was appointed by the U.S. secretary of energy to the inaugural board of the U.S. Foundation for Energy Security and Innovation, which he currently chairs. Chiang helped design and implement the federal CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. 

“Mung Chiang is a distinguished scholar who brings understanding and experience in the complexities of research- intense universities along with a proven ability to grow the resources that power discovery,” says Susan Quaggin, who served on the presidential search committee and chairs the Department of Medicine in Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “His genuine commitment to faculty, students and staff and his ability to bring people and ideas together across disciplines to deliver results are exactly what Northwestern needs to remain at the forefront of innovation.” 

President Emeritus Henry Bienen ’09 H, who served as Northwestern’s interim president through the end of June, believes Chiang is uniquely equipped to lead the University into the future.  

“Mung’s energy, intelligence, accessibility and humility combine to make him the right leader at the right time,” Bienen said in May. “I am confident that his presidency will inspire our faculty, staff and students to new heights ... and remind our faithful alumni just how proud they are to be Northwestern Wildcats.”