Tripathi to step down as UB president

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Satish K. Tripathi, the longest-serving president to lead the University at Buffalo since it joined the SUNY system in 1962, has announced that he will step down next July.

“I have been delighted to make Buffalo my home, proud to call UB my academic home and honored to serve as UB’s president,” Tripathi said in a Sept. 16 email to students, faculty and staff.

Tripathi, who will return to his faculty role in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences next fall, said he had been contemplating the decision for several months and expressed confidence that he is stepping down from the presidency with UB positioned for even greater success.

“There are many reasons to celebrate our shared accomplishments,” he wrote. “What is perhaps most gratifying is that, through every chapter and challenge, we have held fast to our university mission and values.”

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Tripathi joined UB as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs in 2004 after serving as dean of the Bourns College of Engineering at the University of California, Riverside, for seven years.

He was appointed UB’s 15th president on April 18, 2011, becoming the university’s first international-born president.

As president, Tripathi is credited with leading UB through a transformative era of productivity and progress, and for his sure and steady leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and other periods of unease and distress precipitated by local, national and international events.

During his tenure, Tripathi has extended the university’s local and global reach by increasing its contributions to society’s grand challenges. His presidency is marked by impressive growth in the university’s research portfolio and sponsored research expenditures, a dramatically enhanced and innovative educational experience for undergraduate and graduate students, and more extensive engagement with the region and world.

Together, these achievements have significantly elevated UB’s stature as a premier public research university. From 2010 to 2024, UB rose 22 spots in the U.S. News & World Report rankings among U.S. public universities and, in the same period, 44 spots among U.S. public and private universities. UB achieved further distinction in 2022 when Gov. Kathy Hochul designated it a New York State flagship institution.

Throughout his presidency, Tripathi has committed to expanding the breadth of UB’s research portfolio and enhancing the societal benefit of faculty’s scholarly investigations. His focus on leveraging disciplinary strengths to solve contemporary problems has had a profound impact on UB’s research activities. Indeed, his tenure has seen UB’s sponsored research expenditures increase 65%, from $157.1 million to $259 million.

Tripathi’s leadership was key to UB securing numerous prestigious federal grants, among them the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical and Translational Science Award. First awarded in 2015 — and renewed in 2020 and again this year, for a total of over $65 million — the CTSA put UB and its partners in the Buffalo Translational Consortium into an elite tier of institutions charged with speeding the delivery of new drugs, diagnostics and medical devices to patients. Complementing these efforts, in 2019 UB launched the Community Health Equity Research Institute, a multidisciplinary center that develops and tests solutions to eliminate health disparities in Buffalo.

In 2013, the National Science Foundation awarded a research consortium led by UB $25 million to develop the university’s first NSF Science and Technology Center to transform the field of structural biology using X-ray lasers. To date, the consortium, which received a $22.5 renewal award in 2018, is among the most productive of its kind in both scholarly publications and protein structures identified for drug discovery and other applications.

Last year, Tripathi facilitated an agreement to move Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute into UB’s ecosystem, cementing the two institutions’ longstanding partnership in structural biology research critical to understanding and treating disease.

Tripathi has been instrumental in positioning UB as a leader in numerous other cutting-edge fields. In 2012, the university received designation as a New York State Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics; two years later, UB launched the interdisciplinary Department of Materials Design and Innovation to accelerate research and education in advanced manufacturing and biotechnology.

Among Tripathi’s most prominent achievements has been advancing UB’s reputation as a powerhouse of disciplinary expertise in artificial intelligence. Acknowledging the university’s longstanding record of leveraging AI for public good, Hochul last year designated UB the home of Empire AI, a public-private consortium aimed at putting New York State at the forefront of the AI revolution. Since launching the “Alpha” phase of Empire AI on UB’s Downtown Campus in fall 2024, it has supported more than 85 projects with over 250 researchers statewide.

In recent years, UB also received two major federal grants for its research in AI and childhood education: a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish the national AI Institute for Exceptional Education, where researchers across disciplines are developing artificial intelligence systems that identify and assist children with speech and/or language processing challenges; and a $10 million award from the U.S. Department of Education to lead a new national center, the Center for Early Literacy and Responsible AI, in harnessing AI to transform early literacy instruction.

In the domain of liberal arts, UB has achieved unprecedented success competing for awards from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, one of the most prestigious grants awarded in the humanities. Prior to Tripathi’s tenure, UB had received one such grant; in the past four years it has received five, including a $3.1 million award to establish the Department of Indigenous Studies.

As president, Tripathi has built on UB’s strong foundation of faculty excellence in order to fuel student success and elevate institutional prominence. In 2023, he unveiled a plan to hire full-time faculty in areas of university strength and global importance, resulting in the faculty ranks growing by 140.

In terms of distinctions, the number of national and international honorifics and awards received by faculty has more than doubled over the past 10 years. Within the SUNY system, UB faculty have made unprecedented gains in recognition during Tripathi’s term of leadership as well. From 1963, the year the SUNY Distinguished Professor rank was created, until 2010, 121 UB faculty members had been elevated to its Distinguished Academy. In just the 14 years since Tripathi became president, an additional 95 faculty members have joined its ranks.

Tripathi’s commitment to bring the innovations of UB’s scholarly community to market helped UB coalesce into a dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem that has benefited students, faculty and the broader Western New York community.

UB has guided hundreds of startups that have raised more than $743 million and, in the past three years, created 1,700 local jobs. In 2018, UB and its research partners received a major boost to grow the region’s tech economy with a $32 million state investment to establish the Innovation Hub, designed to cultivate startup formation and growth, and the Incubator @ CBLS, a 42,000-square-foot collaborative space on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus to spur innovation and entrepreneurship in downtown Buffalo. Among the startups operating in the space and supported by UB’s Office of Business and Entrepreneur Partnerships was a faculty biopharmaceutical company acquired in 2024 by Merck.

In 2016, with financial support from the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, UB unveiled the Blackstone LaunchPad, a center that provides students with a comprehensive array of entrepreneurship resources, programs and mentorship. Expanded and rebranded as the CoLab in 2023, it has boasted more than 55,000 engagements with enterprising students since its establishment. These initiatives, combined with the introduction of an academic concentration and minor in entrepreneurship, have earned UB a national ranking among the top undergraduate schools for entrepreneurship studies for the past three years.

In total, Tripathi has overseen the launch of seven academic departments as president. In addition to Materials Design and Innovation and Indigenous Studies, these include the departments of Biomedical Informatics, Jewish Thought, Engineering Education, Environment and Sustainability, and the new Department of AI and Society, which this fall introduced seven first-of-their-kind undergraduate degree programs combining AI with traditional academic disciplines.

Alongside the growth of new degree programs and departments over the past 14 years, UB’s general education program underwent one of the most expansive revisions in decades. Introduced in 2016 and designed to provide students with a more customizable liberal arts foundation and an integrated academic experience, the UB Curriculum was a landmark initiative that earned UB national acclaim for innovation.

As the first Indian-born president of a university in the Association of American Universities, Tripathi has played a prominent role in burnishing UB’s reputation as a leading global institution of higher education.

To that end, he formalized partnerships to foster research collaboration and student exchanges with 31 institutions around the world, bringing the total number of such alliances to 95 in 34 countries.

In 2022, Tripathi brought the leaders of universities across India to UB to sign a historic agreement to collaborate on research in nanotechnology, biotechnology and photonics, among other fields.

Tripathi also oversaw the growth of UB’s undergraduate programs at the Singapore Institute of Management, which celebrated their 20th anniversary last year. Established with a Bachelor of Science degree program in business administration and an enrollment of 50 students, UB-SIM now offers seven degree programs and enrolls some 1,300 students annually.

Throughout Tripathi’s presidency, UB has consistently ranked in the top 30 U.S. universities for hosting international students. Today, UB is the academic home to undergraduate and graduate students from more than 100 countries around the globe.

As UB’s national and international standing has improved during Tripathi’s tenure, so has the academic profile of the student body. Not only did the average GPA of first-year incoming students increase from 2011 to 2024, the percentage of those reporting a GPA of 3.75 or higher nearly tripled.

During the same period, UB celebrated a growing number of student recipients of prestigious academic honors, including its first two awardees of the Truman Scholarship, the premier national honor for students preparing for careers in public service.

Tripathi’s prioritization of academic access and success has led to many novel programs. Among them, UB’s “Proud to be First” initiative, established in 2020, earned the university national distinction for uplifting first-generation students in higher education, who today represent one in five incoming UB freshmen.

UB has enjoyed robust enrollment over the 14 years of Tripathi’s presidency, even during periods of declining national enrollment. For the seventh consecutive year, UB’s total enrollment was more than 30,000 students for the 2025-26 academic year. Moreover, UB received a record number of first-year applications and welcomed its largest first-year class in the university’s history. 

In athletics, UB has made great strides in the Mid-American Conference.

Since joining the MAC in 1998, eight of UB’s 11 regular-season MAC team championships have taken place since 2011, while 16 of 18 MAC tournament team championships have occurred since 2011. In addition, UB has won more than 200 individual MAC championships in swimming and diving, wrestling, cross-country, and track and field since 2011.

Dedicated to providing all students with a well-rounded UB experience, Tripathi has placed equal importance on student-athletes’ achievements off the field of play. In the 2024-25 academic year, UB’s student-athletes posted their highest collective GPA in the history of the Athletics Department.

In 2011, Tripathi implemented a long-range master plan for transforming UB into a vibrant living-learning environment. Central to this plan was returning the medical school back to the city’s core to anchor an academic health center on the Downtown Campus. The move would enhance medical education, clinical care and collaborations with UB’s research and hospital partners while bolstering the city’s biomedical sector as a catalyst for regional economic development.

This vision was realized in 2017 with the opening of the new home of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The school’s naming — the first in UB’s history — recognizes a UB alumnus and one of the university’s most generous philanthropists, Delaware North Chaiman Jeremy M. Jacobs, along with his family. Longtime supporters of UB, the Jacobs family gave $30 million to the medical school in 2015, bringing the family’s overall giving to the university at that time to more than $50 million.

The move of the Jacobs School downtown spurred a major revitalization of the South Campus as the home of UB’s graduate and professional educational programs. The plan has produced the renovation of the Pharmacy Building; Hayes and Crosby halls, home of the School of Architecture and Planning; Squire Hall, home of the School of Dental Medicine; and the Clement and Goodyear residential halls, along with the opening of 1Diefendorf, among other projects. The South Campus’ landscape has been transformed as well, with added green spaces and courtyards to restore the classic collegiate beauty envisioned by Buffalo architect E.B. Green in his 1930 campus plan.

On the North Campus, UB opened the engineering school’s Barbara and Jack Davis Hall in 2012. The bulk of UB’s Heart of the Campus project was completed in the ensuing years with the renovation of Silverman Library, the opening of the student service center 1Capen, the international eatery One World Café and one of the Student Union’s most significant renovations in more than two decades.

The Athletics Department greatly expanded and modernized student-athletes’ training facilities with the help of major gifts from alumnus Tunney Murchie, BS ’75, MBA ’76, to construct the Murchie Family Fieldhouse, completed in 2019, and the Brittany Murchie Mulla Sports Performance Center, which opened in 2024.  Among other capital priorities on the North Campus, UB unveiled the redesigned Fargo Quad, creating a “front door” and central gathering space in the Ellicott Complex, UB’s largest residential facility.

Looking ahead, construction planned or in progress will continue to help UB realize its full potential as a model 21st-century university.

These projects include, on the South Campus:

• Foster Hall, the nearly completed renovation of the new home for the Graduate School of Education.
• The renovation of Parker Hall as the new home for the School of Social Work.
• A museum within Abbott Library to house UB’s world-class collection of materials by and related to author James Joyce.
• The renovation of Clark Hall for student wellness and recreation.

On the North Campus:

• Russell L. Agrusa Hall, a new building for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
• An Interdisciplinary Research Building to foster greater collaboration among UB scientists.
• The AI & Society Building.
• The Empire AI Data Center.

During Tripathi’s tenure, investments in major building renovations and new building construction have exceeded $2.5 billion.

At the helm of UB, Tripathi has overseen unprecedented levels of fundraising, with three of the largest-ever single donations to the university made during his presidency.

In addition to the Jacobs family’s $30 million gift to the medical school, two benefactors contributed $40 million each. In 2011, family physician George Ellis Jr., a 1945 medical school graduate, gave his gift on the condition that his identity not be revealed until after he and his wife were deceased — by which time, the value of their overall gifts had grown to $50 million. In 2023, Russell L. Agrusa, a 1976 graduate and retired software company executive, gave $40 million to support the construction of the forthcoming engineering building.

Gifts from nearly 84,000 donors fueled the record-breaking success of Boldly Buffalo, the fundraising campaign spearheaded by Tripathi. Announced in 2018, the campaign surpassed its original $650 million goal at a record pace, leading to the extension of the goal to $1 billion. In 2024, UB celebrated the successful conclusion of its largest fundraising campaign in university history, with more than $1.1 billion raised.

The Boldly Buffalo campaign made possible prominent enhancements to UB’s infrastructure along with substantial support for student success, faculty research and initiatives designed to generate societal impact. In all, it led to the creation of 336 student scholarships and fellowships, and 52 endowed professorships. More than 100 new or renovated buildings, spaces and campus improvements resulted from donors’ generosity, and UB’s endowment grew by nearly $400 million.

A vocal advocate for sustainability, Tripathi has prioritized initiatives that have established UB as one of higher education’s standard bearers for climate action.

UB’s on-site solar project — completed in 2022 and comprised of five solar arrays and four rooftop solar installations — made the university one of the largest on-campus producers of renewable energy in the U.S.

Through the campus master plan, UB has constructed or renovated eight buildings that have earned LEED gold certification, a designation for a demonstrated commitment to sustainable design, construction and operations.

For its comprehensive efforts, UB has been recognized as one of the most environmentally friendly universities on the planet. Recent honors have placed UB among the top 25 U.S. universities for environmental and social impact, and first in the world for addressing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals related to climate action.

In 2022, Vice President Kamala Harris chose to visit UB for its leadership in sustainability research and practices.

While discussing the administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, she praised UB’s campus-wide environmental initiatives, declaring them “a model for our country.”

In situating UB among the nation’s premier public research universities, Tripathi has distinguished himself as a transformative higher education leader. He has received numerous commendations for his professional accomplishments, including honorary degrees from Maharaja Surajmal Brij University in India, the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, and Brock University in Canada. He also received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Banaras Hindu University, where he had received his undergraduate degree.

In 2024, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Tripathi co-chairs the Association of American Universities (AAU) Task Force on Expanding U.S.-India University Partnerships and serves on the College Football Playoff Board of Managers and the board of the University Innovation Alliance. Previously, he chaired the Mid-American Conference Council of Presidents and Internet2, and served on the boards of the AAU, NCAA Division I, NCAA Board of Governors, Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

Tripathi’s reputation has helped the university attract world-renowned figures to campus. In 2013, President Barack Obama addressed an audience of thousands in Alumni Arena, marking the first time a sitting U.S. president had visited UB since Millard Fillmore — who was also then serving as the university’s chancellor — in 1853.