Ushma Neill

Ushma S. Neill serves as Vice Provost for Campus Integration at Columbia University.

In this role, she provides strategic and operational leadership to strengthen collaboration and integration across Columbia’s campuses. She works closely with deans, faculty, and academic and administrative leaders to connect research, education, and institutional initiatives that span schools and units.

Her portfolio focuses on building durable structures that support interdisciplinary programs, shared resources, and joint initiatives. She also advances University-wide academic priorities by strengthening coordination, project planning, and communication across campuses, with the goal of amplifying Columbia’s collective impact.

Dr. Neill joined Columbia in March 2025 as Chief of Staff to the President and Vice President for Campus Alignment. She brings extensive experience at the intersection of academic leadership, research, and institutional strategy.

Before coming to Columbia, Dr. Neill served for more than a decade in senior leadership roles at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, including as Chief of Staff to the President and CEO and later as Vice President for Scientific Education and Training.

Earlier in her career, she spent more than twenty years in scientific publishing, including as Executive Editor and Editor-at-Large of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, following earlier work at Nature Medicine.

Dr. Neill holds a BS, MS, and PhD in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University, and completed postdoctoral studies at Imperial College London as a Marshall Scholar. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and three children.