Michael Kotlikoff

Michael I. Kotlikoff is an American researcher, academic leader, and veterinarian working as the provost of Cornell University. He has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1986, and made significant contributions to muscle biology, heart repair, and mouse genetics. Born to a Jewish family, Kotlikoff received a Bachelor of Arts degree in literature from the University of Pennsylvania and a Veterinariae Medicinae Doctoris (VMD) from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. He then pursued research training, earning a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in physiology at the University of California, Davis in 1994, before returning for postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania in the Veterinary and Medical schools. Kotlikoff worked as a faculty member at Penn, appointed in the Veterinary and Medical Schools from 1985 to 2000, and chaired the Department of Animal Biology from 1996 to 2000, while also serving as director of the Center for Animal Transgenesis and Germ Cell Research from 1998 to 2000. In 2000, he was recruited to Cornell University to chair the newly formed Department of Biomedical Sciences, and to chair the Mammalian Genomics Initiative. As chair, Kotlikoff markedly expanded departmental research, oversaw the university's strategy to develop core mouse facilities, and established and oversaw the university transgenesis facility. In 2007, Kotlikoff was appointed dean of the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University, and in 2015, he was appointed Cornell's 16th provost. Following the death of President Elizabeth Garrett, Kotlikoff served as acting president of Cornell for several months, until the appointment of Hunter Rawlings as interim president. Kotlikoff's laboratory works on cardiovascular biology and heart repair, and he leads a National Heart Lung and Blood Resource (the Cornell Heart, Lung, Blood Resource for Optogenetic Mouse Signaling) developing combinatorial mouse resources for in vivo biology.