Ray Jayawardhana, provost of the Johns Hopkins University, is leaving Baltimore to become the tenth president at the California Institute of Technology.

Jayawardhana has served as provost, or chief academic officer, at Johns Hopkins since 2023. He will begin leading the California university this July.

“During his tenure at Johns Hopkins, Ray partnered with me and colleagues across the university in navigating a shifting landscape in higher education while advancing our shared aspirations for the university,” President Ron Daniels said in a statement.

The leadership change comes at a time when Hopkins, which historically receives the most federal research funding of any university in the country, deals with repeated blows from the Trump administration. Cuts to federal funding, changes to award calculations, an investigation into alleged antisemitism and policies impacting international students have all challenged university leadership in the past year.

In response to the shifting higher education landscape, Johns Hopkins announced its largest layoffs in its 150-year history last year and has frozen most hiring.

Like Hopkins, Caltech, which is located just north of Los Angeles, is a research-focused university. While it hasn’t received the same scrutiny from the Trump administration, it conducted over $350 million in federally sponsored research last year.

A professor of physics and astronomy, Jayawardhana previously served as the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University and the Dean of Science at York University.

“It has been a profound privilege to serve Johns Hopkins as provost,” Jayawardhana said in a statement. “I will remain a proud and enthusiastic champion of Johns Hopkins’ mission, so deeply grounded in public purpose and in discovery for the benefit of humanity.”

Jayawardhana is not the first Hopkins provost to leave the university for a presidential position. His predecessor, Sunil Kumar, left Hopkins in 2023 to lead Tufts University.

In his time as provost at Hopkins, Jayawardhana led the development of the Pivot and Bridge Grants for faculty facing funding gaps, expanded the university’s artificial intelligence tools and stewarded the hiring of deans across the university.

“Ray is a leader of exceptional distinction who brings a complement of qualities — as a pioneering astrophysics researcher, respected university administrator, and compelling science communicator — that together will ensure Caltech builds on its legacy of transformational research and exploration to benefit humanity,” said David W. Thompson, chair of Caltech’s board of trustees.

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