Michael M. Crow is an educator, knowledge enterprise architect, science and technology policy scholar and higher education leader. He became the sixteenth president of Arizona State University in 2002 and has led ASU’s rapid and groundbreaking transformation into one of America’s best public metropolitan research universities.

As a model “New American University,” ASU simultaneously demonstrates comprehensive excellence, inclusivity representative of the ethnic and socioeconomic spectrum of the United States, and consequential societal impact. Lauded as the ”No. 1 most innovative” school in the nation by U.S. News & World Report (2016-2025), and garnering top accolades for global impact and student employability, ASU is a student-centric, technology-enabled public enterprise focused on complex global challenges related to sustainability, economic competitiveness, social embeddedness, entrepreneurship and global engagement. Under Crow’s leadership, ASU has established more than thirty new transdisciplinary schools, including the School of Earth and Space Exploration, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and launched pioneering multidisciplinary initiatives including the Biodesign Institute, the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, the nation’s first School of Sustainability, and significant initiatives in the humanities and social sciences.

Crow’s model has achieved record-breaking levels of traditional, online and international student enrollment, first-year student quality and retention, ethnic and socioeconomic inclusion, and a more than six-fold increase in research expenditures. ASU became an AAU institution in 2023, and its meteoric ascent in quality, growth and modernization has earned separate rankings as one of the top 100 most prestigious universities in the world by Times Higher Education, and No. 1 public university of choice for international students by the Institute of International Education. The inaugural recipient of the American Council on Education Award for Institutional Transformation, and one of TIME magazine’s “10 Best College Presidents,” Crow previously served as executive vice provost and professor of science and technology policy at Columbia University. A two-term member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship and a former member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Academic Advisory Council, Crow is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), National Academy of Public Administration, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.