Magnus Egerstedt named executive vice chancellor and provost
Egerstedt, a renowned robotics researcher, joins Carolina after serving as dean of engineering at the University of California, Irvine.
UNC-Chapel Hill has appointed Magnus Egerstedt as executive vice chancellor and provost, effective March 2, 2026. Egerstedt, currently dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and a professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department at the University of California, Irvine, will succeed Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost James W. Dean Jr., who has been serving in an interim role since May.
“We are delighted to welcome Magnus Egerstedt to our Carolina community, and I look forward to working alongside him,” said Chancellor Lee H. Roberts. “With a distinguished record of leadership and deep expertise in higher education, he is exceptionally well-suited for this role. His scholarship reflects an innovative spirit and a commitment to improving the well-being of others, central tenets in our mission to be the leading public university. I am excited to see how he will help us move Carolina forward.”
Egerstedt’s research centers on the control and coordination of large-scale robotic networks, with transformative applications in environmental monitoring, disaster response and sustainable infrastructure. He is the architect of the Robotarium at Georgia Tech, a first-of-its-kind remotely accessible swarm robotics laboratory that has empowered over 7,000 users worldwide to conduct real-time experiments with hundreds of autonomous robots. At UC Irvine, he directs the Robot Ecology Lab, an air-ground swarm robotics facility pioneering algorithms for deploying heterogeneous robot teams in dynamic natural environments, including wildfire zones and marine ecosystems.
“Carolina is a remarkable university that has managed to stay true to its identity as the first public university in the nation yet being a forward-looking and innovative institution. I have been highly impressed with the energy and ambition I have experienced around campus, and I am honored to have been entrusted with this opportunity by Chancellor Roberts,” said Egerstedt. “I am looking forward to working with Carolina’s outstanding faculty, students and staff on the next chapter in this storied university’s history, with AI, engineering and enrollment growth now at the forefront.”
Prior to joining UC Irvine, Egerstedt was the Julian T. Hightower Chair at Georgia Tech, where he co-founded the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. He received a master’s in engineering physics and a doctorate in applied mathematics from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden, a bachelor’s in philosophy from Stockholm University, and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Harvard University.
A fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, International Federation of Automatic Control and multiple other professional engineering societies, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, Egerstedt has garnered numerous accolades, including the Alumni of the Year Award from KTH and prestigious teaching and research honors from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense.
“I’m thrilled with the selection of Dr. Egerstedt as Carolina’s next provost. Our faculty were adamant in their desire for a provost with a strong academic background, which he most certainly has,” said Beth Moracco, chair of the faculty and a member of the provost search committee. “I was impressed by his understanding of the breadth of what we as faculty at Carolina do, inside and outside of the classroom, and by his commitment to public higher education, academic freedom, and authentic shared governance. I look forward to working with him as our next chief academic officer.”
The search committee was co-chaired by Stan Ahalt, dean of the UNC School of Data Science and Society, and Nancy Messonnier, dean of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and Bryson Distinguished Professor in Public Health. The University also thanked interim Provost Dean for the exceptional leadership he has provided to advance Carolina’s commitment to academic excellence.
