Meet the President

T. Gerard (Gerry) Bradley, President, University of Louisville

T. Gerard (Gerry) Bradley, BDS, MS, Dr.Med.Dent., became the 20th president of the University of Louisville in 2025. A first-generation college student, Bradley often speaks to the difference a college degree made in his own life and is among the university’s most ardent champions of the institution’s work to expand access, strengthen student success and keep a UofL education affordable. Under his leadership, and through the work of faculty and staff across the university, UofL has enrolled the largest student bodies in its history in two consecutive years and entered the U.S. News & World Report ranking of the nation’s Top 100 public universities for the first time. The university has also been recognized as one of just 13 institutions nationwide to hold the Carnegie Foundation’s highest designations for research activity, community engagement and student outcomes.

Bradley has worked closely with university leaders, elected officials and community and industry partners to expand UofL’s research and innovation enterprise. During his presidency, the university launched the Kentucky Center for Digital Innovation, a state-funded center that unites UofL’s research, workforce development and industry collaboration in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence; secured a $70 million federal appropriation to build the Center for Bioscience, an interdisciplinary research facility that will anchor a planned innovation park adjacent to the J.B. Speed School of Engineering; and was selected to operate a Defense Innovation OnRamp Hub for Kentucky, one of a small number of such hubs nationwide, which connects the commonwealth’s technology companies, manufacturers and researchers with new opportunities in defense innovation.

He is overseeing the largest single-project funding package in UofL’s history: the $280 million Health Sciences Building, made possible by a $260 million investment from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Scheduled for completion in 2029, the six-story facility will serve the Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Public Health and Information Sciences, and its extensive simulation spaces will allow the university to grow enrollment in health professions programs to meet Kentucky’s health care workforce needs.

Bradley joined UofL in August 2016 as dean of the School of Dentistry and became the university’s executive vice president and university provost in 2022, serving first on an interim basis and then permanently as chief academic officer overseeing all colleges, schools and deans. As provost, he led a renewed institutional commitment to enrollment growth, student success and academic excellence that produced gains in first-year persistence, university scholarship support and total enrollment. He hired eight deans and collaborated with senior administrators to develop a new university budget model.

Before coming to Louisville with his wife and five sons, Bradley was chair and professor of developmental sciences at Marquette University School of Dentistry, where he served as associate dean for research and graduate studies. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Orthodontics and a member of the American Dental Association, the American Dental Education Association, the International Association for Dental Research and the Edward H. Angle Society of Orthodontics.

Bradley earned his BDS in Cork, Ireland, completed his orthodontic specialty training and MS degree at The Ohio State University and received his doctorate in dentistry from the University of Bern in Switzerland.