Michael Kotlikoff

Michael I. Kotlikoff is an American biomedical researcher, academic leader, and veterinarian who served as the provost of Cornell University since before his appointment as interim president of the university in 2024. His work on cardiovascular biology, optogenetics, mouse genetics, and ion channel function has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1986.

Early life and education
Kotlikoff received a Bachelor of Arts degree in literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973 and a Veterinariae Medicinae Doctoris (VMD) from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine in 1981. He then pursued research training, earning a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in physiology at the University of California, Davis in 1984, before returning for postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania in the Veterinary and Medical schools.

Career
Kotlikoff worked as a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, appointed in the Veterinary and Medical Schools from 1985 to 2000, and chaired the Department of Animal Biology from 1996 to 2000, while also serving as director of the Center for Animal Transgenesis and Germ Cell Research from 1998 to 2000. His work helped establish the identity and function of ion channel proteins in muscle cells, and his laboratory helped create and progressively improve Green Fluroescent Protein (GFP) -based optogenetic sensor molecules, termed GCaMPs, and created the first transgenic mouse expressing an optogenetic sensor.

In 2000, he was recruited to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, to chair the newly formed Department of Biomedical Sciences, and to chair the Mammalian Genomics Initiative. As chair, Kotlikoff markedly expanded departmental research, oversaw the university's strategy to develop core mouse facilities, and established and oversaw the university transgenesis facility. In 2007, Kotlikoff was appointed dean of the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University. As Dean, while maintaining his research laboratory, Kotlikoff raised funds for and oversaw the renovation of the main buildings of the veterinary college, expanded research programs in the college, partnered with City University of Hong Kong to establish the first accredited veterinary college in Asia (Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences), and supported the expansion of clinical programs, including establishing Cornell's first community based academic referral practices, including Cornell University Veterinary Specialists and Ruffian Equine Center.

In 2015, Kotlikoff was appointed Cornell's 16th provost by President Elizabeth Garrett, after an international search. During the illness and following the death of President Elizabeth Garrett, Kotlikoff served as acting president of Cornell from February until April 2016, until the appointment of Hunter Rawlings as interim president. As Provost, Kotlikoff oversaw the establishment of the Cornell S.C. Johnson College of Business, the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, the establishment of the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, reorganization of the social sciences into multi-college departments, and the Cornell Veterans Initiative. In 2020, Kotlikoff and then-President Martha E. Pollack led Cornell's COVID-19 pandemic response, which included a university -wide diagnostic program driven by epidemiologic data, and resulted in one of the open residential campuses with in-person classes and a low level of SARS CoV-2 infection.

Kotlikoff's laboratory currently works on cardiovascular biology and heart repair, and he leads a National Heart Lung and Blood Resource (the Cornell Heart, Lung, Blood Resource for Optogenetic Mouse Signaling) developing combinatorial mouse resources for in vivo biology. His laboratory reported development of the first mouse strain expressing genetically encoded Ca2+ sensing molecules and the first in vivo recording of heart cell calcium signaling. In 2007, Kotlikoff's lab demonstrated the limited lineage potential of c-kit+ heart cells using a mouse line they developed expressing green fluorescent proteins in c-kit+ cells. This finding contradicted claims that c-kit+ precursor cells in the heart can act as heart stem cells after injury or isolation and transplantation. Numerous subsequent studies have confirmed these findings. In 2012 they showed that neonatal mammalian heart cells do have the potential to support neomyogenesis following heart infarction shortly after birth.

Kotlikoff began a two year term as interim president of Cornell University on July 1, 2024, following the retirement of Martha E. Pollack, Cornell's 14th president.