Vice President for West Campus Planning and Program Development
Michael J. Donoghue, B.A., Ph.D.

Michael J. Donoghue joined Yale in 2000 as the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He served as chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in 2001-02 and as director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History from 2003 to 2008. He also holds faculty appointments in Yale’s Department of Geology and Geophysics and in the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He assumed the newly created position of Vice President for West Campus Planning and Program Development on October 1, 2008.

Mr. Donoghue earned his undergraduate degree from Michigan State University in 1976 and his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University in 1982. He served on the faculty of San Diego State University (1982-85), the University of Arizona (1985-92), and Harvard University (1992-2000), and as a visiting professor at Stanford University (1998-99). He was director of the Harvard University Herbaria from 1995 to 1999 and president of the Society of Systematic Biologists from 1994 to 1995. In 2005 he received the distinguished Alumni Award from Michigan State University. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1997, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2005, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.

Mr. Donoghue’s research focuses on understanding the diversity and evolutionary history of plants, and he has been a leader in the national and international movement to reconstruct the entire Tree of Life. He has published over 180 scientific papers, co-authored a popular textbook on plant diversity, and co-edited Assembling the Tree of Life. He has mentored twenty-five postdoctoral associates and twenty-two graduate students.