The Divisional Deans play a leading role in academic, capital, and campaign planning for the Arts and Sciences divisions. They report directly to the executive vice president, and work with each other and the EVP to ensure the overall coordination of their efforts with the senior staff (especially within academic affairs).
They exercise supervision of academic departments, research centers, institutes and other major units in their division. This includes faculty business that consists of searches, hires, leaves and retentions. They also play a role in budgeting with setting salaries in conjunction with the respective chair, determining research support funding, and monitoring their division’s expenditures. Additionally, they manage renovations and space requests, ARC reviews and oversee research misconduct, conflict of interest, conflict of commitment and equal opportunity.
Dean of Humanities
Bruno Bosteels is professor in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures with a joint appointment in the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. He returned to Columbia in 2016, after having taught for thirteen years at Cornell University, for three years at Columbia, and for six years at Harvard University. His research covers a wide range of topics in literature, culture, and politics in modern Latin America as well as contemporary philosophy and political theory.
Bosteels is the author of, most recently, La comuna mexicana (Akal-Mexico, 2021; second edition Akal-Spain, 2022). His books have been published in English, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Serbian, and Japanese.
He is currently preparing three new books, the first a sustained polemical engagement with contemporary post-Heideggerian thought, titled Philosophies of Defeat: The Jargon of Finitude (Verso); the second, a collection of essays on the antiphilosophers Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Lacan, and Žizek in dialogue with Badiou, titled ¿Qué es la antifilosofía? (forthcoming with Prometeo Libros); and the third, a collection of recent and previously unpublished essays forthcoming under the title The State and Insurrection: New Interventions in Latin American Marxist Theory (University of Pittsburgh Press).
With Joshua Clover he co-edits the book series "Studies in Literature and Revolution" for Palgrave Macmillan; and with George Ciccariello-Maher the book series "Radical Américas" for Duke University Press.
Dean of Science
Ruben Gonzalez is a Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University. He is a first-generation Cuban-American and the first in his family to attend college. He obtained his B.S. in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Florida International University (FIU), a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), in 1995 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 2000. Ruben next moved to Stanford University, where he conducted postdoctoral research as an American Cancer Society (ACS) Postdoctoral Fellow. At Stanford, Ruben worked on developing methods for visualizing biological processes at the highest level of molecular detail using advanced light microscopies. Using these methods, he began to study how ribosomes, the molecular machines that make all the proteins that keep all cells alive and healthy, execute their functions.
Ruben joined the Department of Chemistry at Columbia as an Assistant Professor in 2006 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012 and Full Professor in 2015. Research in his laboratory involves the ongoing development and application of cutting-edge light microscopy methods for investigating the functions of molecular machines, with a continued emphasis on studying how ribosomes make proteins and the role of this process in human health and disease.
Ruben is the author of over 80 scientific publications and holds several US patents. He has chaired or served on the editorial boards of eLife journal and the Journal of Molecular Biology; grant review panels at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the ACS; and on the leadership or program committees of the Biophysical Society, the Protein Society, and the American Chemical Society. Ruben is a lecturer and Chair of Frontiers of Science, Columbia’s Core course in the physical and life sciences. He is also dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in science and academia, including serving as a faculty advisor to Columbia’s Society for Chicanos/Latine and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) student group and as a member of Columbia’s Provost’s Advisory Council for the Enhancement of Faculty Diversity. His research, teaching, and mentorship accomplishments have been recognized with numerous awards, including a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences, an NSF CAREER Award, an ACS Research Scholar Award, a Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award, and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.
Dean of Social Science
Miguel Urquiola is Dean of Social Science and Professor of Economics at Columbia University. He has chaired Columbia’s Department of Economics and its Committee on the Economics of Education. He is also a member of the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).
Outside Columbia, Urquiola is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and has held appointments at Cornell University, the World Bank, the Bolivian Catholic University, and the Bolivian government.
Urquiola’s research is on the Economics of Education. Its focus is on understanding how schools and universities compete, and how educational markets differ from other markets economists study. He has written numerous journal articles on these issues, and a book on why American universities excel at research: Markets, Minds, and Money.