David Madigan named USC provost and executive vice president for academic affairs

David Madigan, an internationally recognized statistics scholar with decades of leadership experience at major research universities, has been named USC’s next provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, USC President Beong-Soo Kim announced Wednesday. Madigan previously served as provost at Northeastern University and as executive vice president and dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Columbia University.

Madigan will hold the Shelly and Ofer Nemirovsky Provost’s Chair and will serve on the faculty as professor of data sciences and operations at the USC Marshall School of Business, with joint appointments in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the Department of Mathematics at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

As provost, Madigan will become USC’s second-highest-ranking official and chief academic officer, responsible for advancing excellence across the university’s teaching, research and scholarship.

“David is a leading scholar who brings more than three decades of leadership across academia and industry, a creative and collaborative approach, and a drive to bring people and ideas together,” Kim said. “He understands firsthand what faculty and students need to pursue bold ideas and do their best work, and he has a remarkable ability to build strong partnerships and find creative ways to turn those ideas into actions. His experience and perspective will be invaluable as we strengthen USC’s academic preeminence, recruit and support world-class faculty and students, and advance research that improves lives.”

Madigan will assume his new duties on Oct. 13, succeeding Andrew T. Guzman, who has served in that position since 2023 and will continue contributing to USC’s academic mission as a returning member of the USC Gould School of Law faculty.

The Board of Trustees approved Madigan’s appointment at a meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 30. The appointment followed a national search.

“When I met President Kim, I immediately felt that we could build a terrific partnership,” Madigan said in an interview. “This is a moment of tremendous opportunity for higher education and America’s great research universities. Few institutions combine USC’s stature and breadth with its instinct to look ahead, embrace new ideas and find better ways to serve students and society. I’m excited to work with President Kim and the Trojan Family to help lead that effort.”

Experience across higher education and industry

Madigan joins USC with a career that has taken him from the technology sector to key roles at some of the nation’s leading research universities, including Northeastern, Columbia, Rutgers University and the University of Washington.

Most recently, Madigan served as Northeastern University’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs from 2020 to 2025, where he was the academic leader of a 14-campus global university system comprising 40,000 students and more than 3,000 faculty. In that role, he helped expand the university’s global system and grow its research enterprise by fostering collaboration across disciplines, including connecting artificial intelligence with health and sustainability. He helped recruit more than 350 new faculty, extend Northeastern’s reach through new campuses across the country and focus the university’s research enterprise to address vexing societal challenges. He is currently a professor of statistics and special advisor to Northeastern’s president, Joseph E. Aoun.

“David Madigan is an exceptional academic leader. He will bring his deep commitment to students and faculty to USC, along with an innovative mindset and a willingness to experiment,” said Aoun, a former dean of USC Dornsife. “The Trojan Family will benefit from his unparalleled experience and integrity.”

At Columbia University, where he spent 13 years, Madigan rose from chair of the Department of Statistics to executive vice president for arts and sciences and dean of the faculty.

In that role, which he held from 2013 to 2018, he provided academic leadership across a broad range of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. His portfolio spanned five schools, 27 departments and more than 50 research centers and institutes. During his tenure, he oversaw major fundraising efforts, including a successful $400 million campaign for Columbia College, the university’s liberal arts college. He also broadened Columbia’s professional studies programs, created new resources for first-generation students, strengthened support for faculty-student mentoring and expanded the university’s international partnerships.

Madigan previously held positions at Rutgers University and the University of Washington, as well as at AT&T Labs, Soliloquy Inc., KPMG and SkillSoft.

His experience across public and private universities and the technology sector has given him a broad perspective on research and education, along with a record of translating ideas into real-world impact — a combination that stood out to USC’s Provost Search Committee, who unanimously recommended Madigan following a global search that attracted a stellar pool of candidates.

“David’s distinguished career has prepared him to meet this moment and help USC make the most of the opportunities ahead,” said David C. Bohnett, co-chair of the Provost Search Committee and vice chair of the USC Board of Trustees.

“What stood out throughout the search was the rare combination of experience, judgment and genuine warmth David will bring to the role,” Bohnett said. “He leads with integrity and openness, and he believes deeply in being present and accessible, the kind of leader who will be out on campus, listening and building relationships across the USC community. The committee recommended him with tremendous enthusiasm, and we are delighted to welcome him to USC.”

An interdisciplinary approach to excellence with impact

Collaboration across disciplines and sectors has been a defining feature of Madigan’s career as a scholar, researcher and university leader.

Madigan has spent decades working at the intersection of data science, medicine and public health. A leading authority on Bayesian statistics — which uses probability to refine our understanding as new information emerges — he has collaborated with experts across academia, government and industry to improve how the safety and effectiveness of medical treatments are evaluated. His research has ranged from uncovering patterns in vast collections of text and data to identifying potential medication safety concerns.

Madigan also has led global collaborations among universities, pharmaceutical companies and government regulators. He is a longtime scientific leader with Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics, or OHDSI (pronounced “Odyssey”), an international network that uses health data and open-source analytics to strengthen medical evidence and improve patient care. He also has advised the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on drug safety and risk management.

Madigan has published more than 200 academic papers, with research spanning Bayesian statistics, text mining, pharmacovigilance and probabilistic graphical models, and served as editor-in-chief of Statistical Science.

An elected fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Madigan is Irish American and earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and doctorate in statistics from Trinity College Dublin.

His training as a statistician continues to shape how he approaches leadership: with an emphasis on evidence, measurable progress and meaningful results.

“My orientation is around data,” he said. “How do you quantify what you’re doing? How do you measure whether what you’re doing is better than what you did yesterday? How do you quantify your impact in the world?”

That evidence-driven approach will inform Madigan’s work with faculty, staff and students across USC. But he emphasized that data is only part of the equation: Advancing USC’s academic preeminence, he said, also depends on attracting and supporting exceptional people.

“At the end of the day, we’re in the people business,” Madigan said. “For a provost, the No. 1 priority is quality: quality students, programs, faculty and staff. We exist to have an impact in the world, both directly and through our students. If we’re going to do that, we have to be excellent in everything we do.”

Joining the Trojan Family

Madigan got an up-close introduction to USC school spirit during a recent football game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, when President Kim invited him and his wife, Áine, onto the field as players passed nearby.

“We could’ve been mowed down, but the atmosphere was incredible,” Madigan joked.

“School spirit matters,” he said. “A place where people are excited to be is the kind of place that can attract great talent.”

Madigan and Áine, a certified public accountant, have three children: Cian, 31; Orna, 29; and Rory, 28. Their eldest works in finance in New York, and Orna is an attorney in Boston. Rory is the founder of Binge Thinking, which brings professors and experts into pubs for talks on everything from psychology and AI to medicine and history.

When he’s not on campus, Madigan hopes to explore Southern California on his high-speed, carbon-fiber recumbent trike. A self-described “true believer and aficionado” of recumbent cycling, he is especially looking forward to trading Boston winter for year-round cycling weather.