Christopher Molloy Named Interim Chancellor of Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Christopher J. Molloy will be interim chancellor of Rutgers University-New Brunswick, President Robert Barchi announced Wednesday. As interim chancellor, Molloy replaces Deba Dutta, who has served as chancellor of the flagship campus for the past year and will be returning to the faculty as a distinguished professor in the School of Engineering.
“Dr. Dutta served admirably as chancellor of Rutgers-New Brunswick,” Barchi said. “During his year as chancellor, Deba oversaw a significant administrative restructuring of the campus and met well the challenges of such an awesome responsibility.”
The president said Molloy’s experience at Rutgers-New Brunswick and in the university administration makes him uniquely qualified to lead Rutgers University-New Brunswick and to help the university fulfill the goals of the strategic plan. “He knows what it is to be a student, a faculty member and a dean at Rutgers-New Brunswick and a senior administrator at the university,” Barchi said. “I can think of no one more qualified to take the reins in New Brunswick than Chris.”
Since 2013, Molloy has served as the university’s senior vice president for research and economic development. His responsibilities include oversight and strategic planning for the university’s more than $700 million in annual research expenditures and management of the many institutional offices and resources that support Rutgers’ research and economic development activities.
Under Molloy’s leadership, Rutgers Office of Research and Economic Development (ORED) expanded the university’s research innovation through patents, startups and the transfer of technologies to industry, including advanced internal translational research support in the life sciences and other critical research areas. ORED also works closely with other New Jersey universities, as well as various state and county organizations to promote economic development, increase public-private partnerships and attract new jobs to New Jersey.
Molloy joined Rutgers in 2007 as dean of the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy in New Brunswick. In 2011, he was appointed interim provost for biomedical and health sciences and successfully led the complex integration of Rutgers and most of the former University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) in 2013. Molloy then served as interim chancellor of the newly created Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences until joining ORED.
Molloy received his bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from Rutgers and his doctoral degree from the joint Rutgers Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School/Graduate School-New Brunswick. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute.
Prior to joining Rutgers, Molloy held senior research and management positions at Johnson & Johnson, 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute. At Rutgers, he holds a faculty position as Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology and is a member of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the American Pharmacists Association. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2016.