Madigan came to Northeastern from Columbia University, where he served as executive vice president for arts and sciences and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In those roles, he oversaw five schools with 27 departments and some 50 research centers and institutes. He led successful initiatives to expand lifelong learning programs, and to make Columbia’s faculty and student body more diverse. Notably, he spearheaded a program to ensure that Columbia’s first-generation students would have the mentoring and support they needed to succeed in a highly demanding academic environment.

At Columbia and in his previous position as Rutgers University’s Dean of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Madigan developed new interdisciplinary learning and research collaborations, and forged industry partnerships to support student and faculty innovation. Under his leadership as department chair, Columbia’s statistics faculty ascended to the ranks of the nation’s top 10.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Madigan has long been a leading researcher at the intersection of Big Data with healthcare innovation. While serving on the statistics faculty at the University of Washington, he was a member of the world-renowned Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Madigan also brings a strong global perspective to Northeastern. A native of Ireland, he has led large-scale global collaborations involving academic and pharmaceutical company researchers and government regulators in the U.S. and Europe. Beyond the halls of academia, he has experience as an entrepreneur, innovation leader, researcher, and consultant, both in the U.S. and Ireland. He earned his BA and PhD from Trinity College Dublin.