Angela V. Olinto will be the next provost at Columbia University in New York City, effective April 1.
Professor Olinto is currently serving as dean of the Division of the Physical Sciences and the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor in the department of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago. In addition to her current faculty appointments, Professor Olinto is a member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. She was the first woman to receive tenure in the department of astronomy and astrophysics, the first woman chair of any department in the physical sciences, and the first woman dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Olinto’s research has made major contributions to the understanding of the inflationary origins of the universe, the cosmological effects of magnetic fields, the structure of neutron stars, and the highest energy cosmic rays, gamma-rays, and neutrinos. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Born in Boston, Professor Olinto spent her formative years in her family’s native Brazil, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in physics from Pontíficia Universidade Católica in Rio de Janeiro. She went on to receive her Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.