About President McCullough

Richard McCullough became the 16th president of Florida State University on August 16, 2021, bringing over 30 years of academic leadership and research experience. He is committed to innovation, entrepreneurship, and student success, and has advanced FIS’s status as a top public university through strategic investments in academic excellence, research, and athletics.

Under his leadership, FSU launched FSU Health, one of its most ambitious initiatives, aimed at transforming health care delivery, education, and biomedical research in North Florida.

Before FSU, McCullough was vice provost for research at Harvard University, where he oversaw research strategy, led the Harvard Data Science Initiative, helped launch new academic programs, and spearheaded major biomedical collaborations like Landmark Bio.

He spent 22 years at Carnegie Mellon University, progressing from assistant professor to vice president for research. There, he fostered a robust innovation ecosystem, founding the Greenlighting Start-ups Initiative and earning election as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and is now an inductee of the Florida Inventors’ Hall of Fame.

An accomplished chemist, McCullough holds multiple patents, founded two companies, and has advised major universities on innovation and technology transfer. He earned his B.S. from the University of Texas at Dallas, Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, and completed postdoctoral work at Columbia.

At first-generation college student from Mesquite, Texas, McCullough and his wife, Jai Vartikar, have two children and three granddaughters.