About the Chancellor
Chancellor Michael Drake Biography
Michael V. Drake, M.D., was appointed the fifth chancellor
of the University of California, Irvine in July 2005.
Since his appointment, Chancellor Drake has led the launch of new programs in
public health, pharmaceutical sciences, and nursing science, which are already providing
highly trained healthcare professionals to meet the critical needs of the
community. Additionally, he oversaw the
creation of the first new public law school in California in more than 40 years;
it held its first graduation in May 2012. The UC Irvine School of Education was
established in July 2012. Under his
leadership, the campus has added more than 5 million square feet of new space,
including the 500,000-square-foot UC Irvine Douglas Hospital and the
275,000-square-foot Student Center, both delivered on time and under budget. An increasingly popular choice for students, the
campus received nearly 70,000 undergraduate applications for admission in fall
2012.
Prior to Chancellor Drake’s arrival at UC Irvine, he served for five years as vice president for health affairs for the University of California system, overseeing academic program policy at UC’s 15 health sciences schools, located on seven campuses. He directed the special research programs in tobacco, breast cancer, and HIV/AIDS; co-chaired the California/Mexico Health Initiative; launched the PRIME (PRogram In Medical Education) initiative to train physicians to care for underserved populations statewide; and founded the California Health Benefits Review Program. Before that, he spent more than two decades on the faculty of the UC San Francisco School of Medicine, ultimately becoming the Steven P. Shearing Professor of Ophthalmology and senior associate dean. He has served as an administrative leader, physician-scientist, and teacher, conducting clinical research on glaucoma and maintaining an active referral practice. He has written scores of scholarly articles and chapters, and his fifth textbook was published in 2009.
Chancellor Drake has received numerous honors and
awards for teaching, public service, and research, including the Burbridge
Award for Public Service, the Asbury Award (clinical science), the Michael J.
Hogan Award (laboratory science), the UCSF School of Medicine Clinical Teaching
Award, the S.J. Kimura Teaching Award, the UCSF School of Medicine Alumnus of
the Year Award, and the Gold-Headed Cane Society Speaker’s Cane. In addition, he received the Association of
American Medical Colleges’ Herbert W. Nickens Award and the California Wellness
Foundation’s Champion of Diversity Award. Most recently, he was awarded the inaugural
Binational Health Pioneer Award at the 18th International HIV/AIDS
Conference. He has served as trustee and
president of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and as chair of the
board of trustees of the Association of Academic Health Centers. He is a fellow of the Institute of Medicine
and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is an alumnus of Stanford University (A.B.)
and UC San Francisco (M.D.).
Chancellor Drake and his wife, Brenda, live in Irvine. They have two grown sons.