Michael Amiridis

Michael Amiridis is a Greek-American academic who serves as the 30th president of the University of South Carolina. Prior to this position, he served as chancellor of the University of Illinois Chicago from 2015 to 2022.

Early life and education Amiridis was born in 1962 in Kavala, Greece. He is the elder of the two sons of the late Dimitri and Aspasia Amiridis. Before migrating to the United States, he attended the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. Amiridis earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991 and became a U.S. citizen in 2000.

Early career For three years after earning his Ph.D., Amiridis worked as a research engineer at W.R. Grace and Co., an international manufacturer of specialty chemicals and materials, in Columbia, Maryland, and taught for a semester at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He left the private sector in 1994 and accepted a position as assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of South Carolina. Amiridis was appointed chancellor of the University of Illinois Chicago in 2015, a position he held until resigning in 2022 to become the 30th president of the University of South Carolina. On July 1, 2022, Amiridis succeeded Harris Pastides as president. Pastides had served as president from 2008 to 2019 and again as interim president from 2021 to 2022 following the resignation of Robert Caslen.

As provost at USC, Amiridis led efforts for growth in student enrollment, with significant improvement in the quality of the undergraduate class. He initiated an ambitious faculty hiring program, creating 200 new tenure positions in a four-year period, and developed an academic dashboard to monitor success. Under his leadership, new university-wide programs were implemented, including Palmetto College, the new Carolina Core curriculum, and Global Carolina. He also led the process to create the USC School of Medicine in Greenville.

In 2015, Amiridis was appointed chancellor of the University of Illinois Chicago. During his tenure, UIC achieved historic highs in student enrollments (34,000) and annual research awards ($450 million), initiated an ambitious capital program to renew its infrastructure, initiated and completed a $750 million capital campaign, and acquired the John Marshall School of Law, which became the first public law school in the history of Chicago. He also served on the board of directors of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and was appointed by governor-elect J.B. Pritzker to his Educational Transition Committee.

Amiridis ranked number 3 on the Post and Courier Columbia's 2025 Power List.