President-Elect
Dr. Virinder K. Moudgil
Virinder K. Moudgil has been appointed the seventh president in the 80-year history of Lawrence Technological University, effective July 1.
Since 2001, Moudgil has led academic affairs at Oakland University as senior vice president and provost. He is a professor of biological sciences and chaired OU’s Department of Biological Sciences from 1994 to 2001. He joined the OU faculty in 1976.
Moudgil grew up in India as it transitioned to independence from British rule. He learned to speak Punjabi, the language of his home state of Punjab; Urdu, then used in Indian courts; Hindi, India’s national language; and English.
He received his PhD in zoology-biochemistry from Banaras Hindu University, ranked the top university in India. He was a research fellow in India for two years and came to the United States in 1973 to take a post-doctoral fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, where his mentor was David O. Toft, the discover of a protein that mediates the action of estrogen.
Even as he advanced in administration at OU, Moudgil remained an active researcher of the molecular mechanisms of steroid hormone action and the hormonal regulation of breast cancer. He received nearly $3 million in grant and research support awards from the National Institutes of Health and others.
Moudgil has also held an adjunct professorship at Wayne State University; was a visiting scientist at universities in Serbia, France, and India; and was a consultant to the United Nations Development Program. His research on steroid hormone action and cancer has resulted in wide recognition and more than 200 publications in scientific journals, edited books, book chapters, and scientific presentations.
He has presented invited lectures on international scientific platforms, and has chaired scientific sessions and symposia in the U.S., Czechoslovakia, Spain, the Netherlands, and India. He is the editor-in-chief of the series on the hormone in health and disease, and the organizer of the international Meadow Brook Conferences on Steroid Receptors in Health and Disease. He has served as a regular member of the NIH peer review study sections.
As OU provost, Moudgil oversaw six schools, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Honors College, and eight charter schools. His administrative responsibilities included the main library and 16 administrative units, including technology services, international studies, business incubators, e-learning, grants, contracts, and sponsored research.
He co-chaired the steering committee that established a partnership with Beaumont Health System to create the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, which enrolled its charter class in 2011. He played a key role in the affiliation agreement that brought a branch of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School to the OU campus.
Moudgil provided committed, effective academic leadership and support to OU’s faculty and their programs, launching a number of academic and research initiatives. Numerous postdoctoral, PhD and master’s researchers received their training in his laboratory. Having involved numerous undergraduate students in his research projects, he championed the Provost Undergraduate Research Scholar Program and led other efforts to offer research opportunities to as many students as possible.
Active in many professional and community organizations, Moudgil chaired the Academic Officers Committee (Provost Council) of the Presidents Council of the State Universities of Michigan from 2007–11.
Moudgil has received many awards, including the Michigan Association of Governing Boards of State Universities’ award, Oakland University Foundation Research Excellence Award, the Marian P. Wilson Award, and the George Wibby Award.
His wife, Parviz Gandhi Moudgil, holds a doctoral degree in physiology. They have two adult children, a son, Rishi, and a daughter, Sapna.