Nicholas Wigginton

As associate vice president for research – strategic initiatives, Dr. Wigginton works with faculty and staff to support the broad U-M research community. He works across campus to identify strategic priorities, administer programs, develop and implement internal policies, and increase research competitiveness. Wigginton also helps build new partnerships with key external stakeholders including academia, industry, foundations, and government. He oversees research development activities and is a member of the U-M Office of Research leadership team.

Wigginton holds a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in geosciences from Virginia Tech. He was a postdoctoral scholar at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland and a visiting researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Before joining U-M, Wigginton was a senior editor at Science, one of the world’s premier scientific journals, which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2019-2020, Wigginton was selected to participate in the American Council of Education (ACE) Fellows Program. He served his fellowship at Stanford University, working on projects related to strategic planning, global engagement, and university and national laboratory organizational structures.

U-M Publications

Lumeng, J.C., Chavous, T.M., Lok, A.S., Sen, S., Wigginton, N.S., Cunningham, R.M. (2020) Opinion: A risk–benefit framework for human research during the COVID-19 pandemic.(link is external) Proceed. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S.A, 10.1073/pnas.2020507117.

Wigginton, N.S., Cunningham R.M., Katz R.H., Lidstrom M.E., Moler, K.A., Wirtz, D., Zuber, M.T., (2020) Moving academic research forward during COVID-19(link is external). Science, 368, 1190-1192.

Jasny B., Wigginton N.S., McNutt M., Bubela T., Buck S., Cook-Deegan R., Gardner T., Hanson B., Hustad C., Kiermer V., Lazer D., Lupia A., Manrai A., McConnell L., Noonan K., Phimister E., Simon B., Strandburg K., Summers Z., Watts D. (2017) Fostering reproducibility in industry-academia research(link is external). Science, 357, 759-761.