BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — An American geneticist and university administrator, former Princeton University men’s water polo goalie Dr. Anthony P. Monaco has continued his saving ways as a geneticist and university president since leaving the Tigers’ cage.
A native of Wilmington, Delaware and a 1977 graduate of the Salesianum School, Monaco earned an undergraduate degree as an independent concentrator in neuroscience and behavior at Princeton in 1981.
The goalie for the Tigers’ water polo team during his time at Princeton, he earned his Ph.D. in Neurobiology in 1987 and his M.D. in 1988 in a joint program from Harvard University. His doctoral research, supervised by Louis M. Kunkel, led to his landmark discovery of the gene responsible for X-linked Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy. He subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in London, where he worked on the human genome project at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK), and subsequently a faculty position at the Institute of Molecular Medicine of the University of Oxford. Monaco identified the first gene specifically involved in human speech and language. Nobel Prize-winning biologist Paul Nurse once stated “Tony Monaco was among the first to recognize the importance of what was still an emerging research frontier, human genetics, and its vast potential to address problems such as cancer and autism.”
Monaco held a series of administrative positions at Oxford, the last being Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Planning and Resources), prior to being appointed President of Tufts University in August 2011.
The 13th president of Tufts, major educational initiatives of Monaco’s tenure have included the acquisition of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, enhancing the arts at Tufts. President Monaco is also deeply committed to the well-being of the campus community and currently chairs university-wide councils or steering committees dedicated to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion, preventing sexual misconduct, and supporting sustainability at Tufts. Each of these efforts builds on a comprehensive assessment of how Tufts could best put its values and institutional commitments into practice.
As pro-vice-chancellor for planning and resources at Oxford University from 2007 until his arrival at Tufts, Dr. Monaco developed and led strategic-planning initiatives for academic programs, capital improvements and budgeting and resource allocation. He was an active steward of programs to make an Oxford education possible for students from a range of backgrounds.
At Oxford, he led the Neurogenetics Group, a team of scientists investigating the genetic underpinnings of such neurodevelopmental disorders as autism, specific language impairment, and dyslexia.
At Tufts, President Monaco holds faculty appointments as a professor of biology in the School of Arts and Sciences and as a professor of neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine.
Monaco was elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2006 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018, and is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (U.K.) and the Royal Society of Medicine and a member of the Association of American Physicians.
Most recently, he has been a leader in defining higher education’s role supporting community needs in response to the COVID-19 public health crisis. As a member of the Testing Working Group, joining with other university presidents in Massachusetts, Monaco helped shape policies and testing protocols critical to universities supporting safe in-person instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He chairs the Steering Committee of the Talloires Network, whose more than 375 member institutions around the world are committed to advancing civic engagement in higher education. He has served as the Chair of the Board of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Massachusetts and the New England Small College Athletic Conference. He also serves on the boards of Cummings Foundation, Century Bank, the Omidyar-Tufts Microfinance Fund, Tufts Medical Center and Wellforce.
