Neuroscientist Melanie Woodin has been named the University of Toronto’s 17th president. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the school and a PhD from the University of Calgary.University of Toronto/Supplied
Melanie Woodin’s dream was to be a scientist, influenced by a family trip where she saw University of Toronto graduate students gathering research samples on a Northern Ontario lake.
Now, two decades after being hired to teach neuroscience at U of T, Prof. Woodin has been chosen to lead what she called “one of the great universities of the world.”
On July 1, she will become U of T’s first female president, the school’s governing council announced Wednesday.
Prof. Woodin, who has served as dean of the faculty of arts and science since 2019, said it’s a profound honour to be chosen for the top job.
“As I embark on leading the university into its next chapter, with optimism, I ask you to join me in dreaming big,” she said in her public remarks.
“I recognize that I’m talking about leading with ambition at a time when the world is in turmoil, marked by deep division, political conflict and looming existential crises. At a time when academic freedom is under threat and at a time when funding for higher education is constrained.”
Prof. Woodin pledged to bolster public faith in higher education, highlighting the university’s role as a hub for transformative research, an engine of economic growth and a conduit for social mobility in Canada.
“I want to make sure that every Canadian knows that the University of Toronto is here for them,” Prof. Woodin said later in an interview.
She emphasized that U of T combines research and teaching excellence with access for students from all backgrounds. No domestic student is turned away owing to financial need, Prof. Woodin said. And it does so on a large scale, with nearly 100,000 students across its three campuses.
It’s also considered among the top 25 universities in the world, according to the Times Higher Education reputation ranking.
“We graduate more students every year than the Ivy League combined,” Prof. Woodin said, referring to the group of elite American universities that occupy many of the top rungs in world reputation rankings. “And it’s that unique mix of excellence and access at scale that really distinguishes us, both in Canada and around the world.”
Prof. Woodin said she is also focused on U of T’s importance in a changing world. As dean of the university’s largest faculty, she has been involved in negotiations to bring top scholars to U of T and says interest has grown in recent months, as pressure on U.S. universities has increased under President Donald Trump’s administration.
“I wish that we didn’t have this opportunity because of the threats that academic institutions are under in the U.S., but this is an opportunity for us and we are already seizing it.”
As the global balance of power shifts, she said, U of T will have an important role as a centre for research and new discoveries, as a protector of academic freedom and as a place for difficult conversations.
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Prof. Woodin grew up in Quebec and Alberta, and her family moved to Oakville, Ont., when she was in middle school. Her father was an engineer who worked in the telecom business, and her mother was a physiotherapist.
She completed undergraduate and master’s degrees at U of T, where she became interested in the workings of the brain, specifically the neural control of respiration. She went on to a PhD at the University of Calgary and a postdoc at University of California, Berkeley, before joining U of T as an assistant professor in 2004.
Prof. Woodin said the significance of being the first female president of the university is not lost on her. Representation is important, and she made her way in a field that has been largely male-dominated, she said. But, she added, U of T is full of highly qualified female leaders and she is one of many who had the necessary experience to step into this role.
The governing council on Wednesday thanked current president Meric Gertler for his leadership. He has been in the job since 2013 and led the university during the COVID-19 pandemic, when institutions were forced to rapidly pivot to an online learning model before slowly returning to in-classroom instruction.
He was also at the helm when the university was faced with a months-long protest encampment at the heart of its campus last year.
Prof. Gertler in his remarks Wednesday congratulated the presidential search committee on a “wise and auspicious choice.”
One of the challenges awaiting Prof. Woodin is the financial pressure brought on by a domestic tuition freeze imposed by the provincial government in 2019 and recent federal government cuts to international study permits.
U of T, however, has had a relatively strong financial position compared with other Ontario schools. It ran a $508-million operating surplus in 2024, before allocations to capital projects, on a revenue of $4.6-billion.