Santa Jeremy Ono (; born November 23, 1962) is a Canadian-American immunologist and academic administrator, currently serving as the 15th president of the University of Michigan since October 2022.
Ono served as the 15th president of the University of British Columbia from 2016 to 2022 and the 28th president of the University of Cincinnati from 2012 to 2016. Previously as a faculty member of Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, University College London, and Emory University, Ono contributed to the field of gene regulation in the immune system and to the understanding of inflammation in the eye.
Early life and education
Born in 1962, Santa Ono is the son of mathematician Takashi Ono, who immigrated to the United States from Japan in the late 1950s. Ono was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where his father worked as an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of British Columbia from 1961 to 1964. As a result, Ono acquired United States citizenship by jus sanguinis and Canadian citizenship by jus soli. Ono was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Towson, Maryland, where his father worked as a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1964 to 1969 and at Johns Hopkins University from 1969 to 2011.
Ono earned a Bachelor of Arts with a major in biological science from the University of Chicago in 1984 and a Doctor of Philosophy in experimental medicine from McGill University in Canada in 1991.
Career
Science and research
Ono completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University supported by the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation and then held faculty positions at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, University College London, and Emory University. He was GlaxoSmithKline Chair of Biomedical Science and head of the department of immunology at the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology and honorary staff member at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. From March 2006 until September 2008, he served as vice provost for academic initiatives and deputy to the provost at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. He was promoted to senior vice provost for undergraduate education and academic affairs of Emory University in September 2008 and also served as professor of ophthalmology, medicine, pediatrics and biology. In September 2010, he became senior vice president and provost for academic affairs at the University of Cincinnati.
Ono has studied on ocular surface inflammation and the immune basis of age-related macular degeneration. His early work focused on the association of certain MHC haplotypes with susceptibility and resistance to type 1 diabetes. Using a number of recombinant and congenic rat strains, the work mapped susceptibility genes in the BB rat to the class II MHC loci. His work also showed that class I and II MHC gene products are expressed at higher levels or de novo on the insulin-producing beta cells of the islets of Langerhans. He focused much of his research in the next decade on the regulation of MHC gene expression. He showed that the different class II MHC isotypes are differentially expressed and showed that the X2-box cis-element controls this differential expression. His work also showed that the bZIP transcription factor: XBP1 forms a hetero-dimer with c-Fos. This has turned out to be relevant to the developmental control of B cell differentiation. His lab also discovered the NFX1 transcription factor and cloned both the human and murine cDNAs. This factor can bind DNA, RNA and protein via a reiterated RING finger motifs in the central domain of the polypeptide. The protein appears to have important roles in neuronal development and mRNA transport. NFX1 is also a probable E3 ubiquitin-protein ligase. These enzymes are of interest as they have been shown to participate in 3 metabolic pathways: ubiquitin mediated proteolysis, parkinson's disease, and huntington's disease. His lab also demonstrated that the non- histone chromosomal protein HMGA is required for the induction of multiple genes, including MHC genes, interferon-gamma and rhodopsin. They mapped the interaction of HMGA1a and the paired homeodomain motif within Crx and showed that these interactions help recruit such transcriptional activators to the promoter/enhancer.
Using transgenic mouse technology, they also showed (concurrently and independently of Alfredo Fusco), that fusion proteins between HMGA2 and other C terminal peptides (following chromosomal translocation) can drive the development of lipomas and generate obese mice. Further contributions in the field include the mapping of the HMGA2 promoter/enhancer.