UNC announced its selection of its next provost and executive vice chancellor on Wednesday morning: Magnus Egerstedt, who currently serves as the Dean of Engineering in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine.
The university shared Egerstedt’s appointment in a release, concluding a search that began shortly after prior provost Chris Clemens stepped down from the role in May. Egerstedt will formally start in his new position on March 2, 2026.
Magnus Egerstedt (Photo via Steve Zylius/UC Irvine.)
“We are delighted to welcome Magnus Egerstedt to our Carolina community, and I look forward to working alongside him,” UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts said in the release. “With a distinguished record of leadership and deep expertise in higher education, he is exceptionally well-suited for this role. His scholarship reflects an innovative spirit and a commitment to improving the well-being of others, central tenets in our mission to be the leading public university. I am excited to see how he will help us move Carolina forward.”
“Carolina is a remarkable university that has managed to stay true to its identity as the first public university in the nation yet being a forward-looking and innovative institution,” said Egerstedt, who will depart UC Irvine after five years. “I have been highly impressed with the energy and ambition I have experienced around campus, and I am honored to have been entrusted with this opportunity by Chancellor Roberts. I am looking forward to working with Carolina’s outstanding faculty, students, and staff on the next chapter in this storied university’s history, with AI, engineering, and enrollment growth now at the forefront.”
Serving as provost at UNC means working as the chief academic officer for the university, establishing academic standards and policies for conduct while managing the various deans, vice provosts and vice chancellors. The selection marks a departure from UNC’s recent provost selections. James W. Dean Jr. — who is serving as interim provost since Clemens stepped down — was elevated to provost in 2013 after serving as dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School. Upon Dean taking the presidency of the University of New Hampshire in 2017, Bob Blouin was chosen after more than a decade of leading UNC’s pharmacy school. Clemens assumed the role after Blouin retired in 2022, coming from Carolina’s College of Arts & Sciences.
Like those men, Egerstedt’s background is in academia — specifically, research in the robotics space. At UC Irvine, he leads the Robot Ecology Lab that is creating air-ground swarm robotics, which can be deployed and operated in dynamic natural environments like wildfires and marine ecosystems. In addition to his research, he also serves as a professor in UC Irvine’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Before moving to California, Egerstedt worked at Georgia Tech for 20 years, creating the school’s Robotarium — a cutting-edge, remotely accessible swarm robotics laboratory — and co-founding the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. He received a master of science degree in engineering physics and his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm in Sweden, a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Stockholm University, and was a postdoctoral scholar at Harvard University.
“I’m thrilled with the selection of Dr. Egerstedt as Carolina’s next provost,” Beth Moracco, Chair of Faculty for UNC and a member of the provost search committee, said in Wednesday’s release. “Our faculty were adamant in their desire for a provost with a strong academic background, which he most certainly has,” “I was impressed by his understanding of the breadth of what we as faculty at Carolina do, inside and outside of the classroom, and by his commitment to public higher education, academic freedom, and authentic shared governance. I look forward to working with him as our next chief academic officer.”
The 15-person search committee for UNC’s next provost was co-chaired by Dean of the School of Data Science and Society San Ahalt and Dean of the Gillings School of Global Public Health Nancy Messonnier. In addition to Moracco, other members included vice provosts at UNC, university trustees and student government leaders. The Daily Tar Heel reported that the committee’s online survey launched in June to gather input from the campus community about their priorities and expectations for UNC’s next permanent provost garnered more than 2,000 responses.
Featured image via UNC-Chapel Hill.
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