Joshua C. Brumberg

President of the CUNY Graduate Center

Since becoming president of the CUNY Graduate Center in June 2024, Joshua C. Brumberg has championed research and education initiatives that have broad public impact.

As president and, before that, interim president, he has helped the Graduate Center attract nearly $100 million in external funding, including a historic $75 million grant from the Simons Foundation to create research and education programs in the computational sciences. Gifts of $10 million each from the Leon Levy Foundation and the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation have supported the Graduate Center’s centers for biography and the study of socio-economic inequality. The Graduate Center also received over $2 million from Google.org to explore the use of artificial intelligence in higher education.

Under Brumberg’s leadership, the Graduate Center introduced graduate programs in Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies, including its first new Ph.D. program in more than 25 years. It also launched certificates in LGBTQ Studies and Public Scholarship.

A CUNY faculty member for more than two decades, he served as dean for the sciences at the Graduate Center from 2016 to 2023. He twice served as acting executive director of the Advanced Science Research Center at the Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC).

In his role as dean for the sciences, Brumberg oversaw 11 STEM doctoral programs and five master of science programs, the latter created during his tenure. He also managed research operations, including the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, at the Graduate Center and at the CUNY ASRC. During his tenure as dean, he secured essential external funding for diversity programs in the laboratory sciences and gender equity in mathematics, and he co-chaired subcommittees for strategic plan development and Middle States accreditation.

An active neurobiology researcher, he uses behavioral, physiological, and anatomical methods to study how environmental experience affects the development and function of cortical circuits in the brain, the site of cognitive computations. He has published over 60 papers and has received multiple grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, he studied biology at Williams College and earned a Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of Pittsburgh using physiological and computational techniques in his research. He completed postdoctoral fellowships in the Department of Neurobiology at Yale University and the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University before starting his own laboratory in the Department of Psychology at Queens College in 2002, with simultaneous appointments in the Biology, Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience programs at the Graduate Center.