Stony Brook University's new president will be Andrea Goldsmith of Princeton University

Andrea Goldsmith, the dean of engineering and applied science at Princeton University, has been named the seventh president of Stony Brook University.

The State University of New York’s board of trustees voted unanimously Wednesday morning to appoint Goldsmith to the position. She will start Aug. 1.

Her annual salary will be $900,000, including $600,000 in state funds and $150,000 each from the Research Foundation for the State University of New York and the Stony Brook Foundation, according to SUNY.

The salaries of the presidents of the University of California at Berkeley, University of Pittsburgh, University of Virginia and Michigan State University range from about $950,000 to $975,000, SUNY spokesman Conall Smith said in an email. 

Goldsmith, 60, lives in Princeton and plans to move to Stony Brook. She will have use of a campus-owned residence and automobile, the resolution appointing her states. 

The incoming president said she looked forward to “accelerating excellence and impact" at Stony Brook, one of two flagship institutions in the SUNY system.

"I can’t wait to be part of this amazing place," she said at Wednesday's board meeting in Manhattan. "I am so incredibly grateful for your confidence in me ... I am truly honored to be selected."

National search

Goldsmith will take over for interim President Richard McCormick, former president of Rutgers University and the University of Washington, who has presided over Stony Brook since August.

Stony Brook’s previous president, Maurie McInnis, stepped down last year to become president of Yale University after leading Stony Brook for four years.

Kevin Law, who chairs the Stony Brook University Council governing body, led the 25-member presidential search committee. He said the group held four meetings, looked at hundreds of profiles as part of their national search, met with nine candidates and invited four to meet with campus leaders. The group recommended three candidates.

Law praised Goldsmith’s "outstanding research and scholarly record" and said she would make Stony Brook "an even more outstanding university."

Goldsmith researches wireless communications, interconnected systems and neuroscience, and she has written or co-authored three books published by Cambridge University Press, according to Princeton University. She was founder and chief technical officer of Plume WiFi (formerly Accelera Inc.) and of Quantenna Inc., according to Princeton. She also serves on the board of Medtronic, a publicly traded health care technology company. 

She earned her bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and she has served as the Stephen Harris professor of engineering and a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University.

Goldsmith, who has been an inventor on 38 patents, earned the IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal "for contributions to and leadership in wireless communications theory and practice" from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. She has also chaired the board’s diversity and inclusion committee and led the IEEE Information Theory Society, according to the New Jersey-based professional organization.

Stony Brook is already a "big economic engine" for the region, with more than 25,000 students and 15,000 employees, Law said in an interview. Goldsmith is expected to spur more collaborations with Brookhaven National Laboratory and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which could lead to advances in technology, health care and other fields, he said.

"I really think she’s going to do great things for the Long Island economy," he said.

SUNY’s chancellor, John King, echoed those sentiments, calling Goldsmith "the perfect leader to help define Stony Brook’s future."

Navigating the 'funding landscape'

The appointment was also praised by Brenda Anderson, a professor of neuroscience in the Department of Psychology and president of Stony Brook’s University Senate, which includes faculty, staff and students and advises the administration.

"I’m thrilled," Anderson said. "She’s going to bring a lot of energy to the job." 

Goldsmith has a "deep understanding" of higher education, along with expertise in entrepreneurship and federal funding, Anderson said.

With universities facing potential cuts as the Trump administration looks to limit federal spending on National Institutes of Health-funded research and other projects, she said, "We’re going to need someone who understands the funding landscape and how to navigate it."

Goldsmith has been a vocal supporter of diversity programs, which she told an IEEE publication last year were experiencing a "backlash" that she called "really unfortunate." She told the publication that her work in the engineering field "to enhance diversity and inclusion has really been about excellence for the profession," according to the IEEE’s website.

At the board meeting Wednesday, Goldsmith was joined by her husband, while her daughter, son and mother-in-law joined by videoconferences. 

Goldsmith grew up in California, where her father — a Holocaust survivor who left Germany for the United States at 13 — was a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. Her mother was an artist and cartoonist who drew for the Rocky and Bullwinkle show and was the inspiration for the series’ famously vampy Natasha Fatale character, Goldsmith said.

She has been married for 30 years to Arturo Salz, also an engineer and entrepreneur, she said. They have two grown children, Daniel and Nicole Salz.

As an engineer and leader, Goldsmith said, she brings in the "very problem-solving, engineering ... aspect of my dad's approach to the world, and the very creative, out of the box, innovative thinking of my mom's side of the world."

She said, "I'm an entrepreneur at heart, and that's something that I’ve brought to all of my endeavors, not just my startups, but really thinking about opportunities that other people don't necessarily see, and bringing them into fruition." 

Goldsmith said she knows Stony Brook is sometimes referred to as the "Berkeley of the East," but she believes the university "should aspire to be one of the best universities in the country, not modeled after another university, but to craft its own vision and future."

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott is a reporter on the investigations desk. Since starting at Newsday in 2012, she has also covered real estate and the business of health care.