Beth Winkelstein, a long-time leader at the University of Pennsylvania, stepped into the role of provost and senior vice president of academic affairs in fall 2025, overseeing Northeastern’s academic mission and research enterprise.
At the start of the semester, five weeks after stepping into the role at Northeastern, Winkelstein sat down for an interview with The Huntington News to discuss the university’s research, academic mission and global campus network.
In deciding to come to Northeastern, she noted the university’s innovative academic mission and historical commitment to experiential learning.
“I made a decision to be at a place that was leading and not fretting and not wringing their hands about the future, but saying, ‘Let’s get in front of the future. Let’s evolve.’ That’s what Northeastern has done through its entire history,” she said.
As part of Winkelstein’s role at Northeastern, she oversees the university’s 10 colleges and schools, the university’s academic mission and how it will carry out that mission across its global campus network, which continues to be one of the university’s defining features.
“I think that it’s more than just planting our flag,” Winkelstein said of the university’s 13 campuses beyond Boston. “It’s actually really thinking about how we can personalize and customize the entire global university system.”
Part of strategizing how the university runs its non-Boston campuses, she said, is to “make the best and highest use of each of our programs, as well as each of our campuses.” For instance, the Seattle campus, located in a city saturated with tech companies, offers graduate programs in disciplines including computer science and information systems.
Winkelstein also oversees the university’s research enterprise. Northeastern is one of 187 American universities with an R1 status, a designation granted by Carnegie Classifications that recognizes institutions for a high level of research output. To earn the status, universities must spend at least $50 million for research and award 70 research doctorates annually, according to Carnegie’s website.
A bioengineer by training, Winkelstein most recently served at Penn as deputy provost and the Eduardo D. Glandt President’s Distinguished Professor of bioengineering and neurosurgery. She earned her undergraduate degree in bioengineering from Penn and went on to complete a doctorate in the field at Duke University. After completing postdoctoral training at Dartmouth College, she joined Penn faculty in 2002.
One year after entering the role of deputy provost at Penn in 2020, Winkelstein was tapped as interim provost. She held the role from July 2021 through May 2023 before being re-appointed as deputy provost in 2025. During her time at Penn, she taught classes in neurology and engineering, mentored more than 60 doctoral and postdoctoral researchers and served as vice chair on an antisemitism task force. According to her Northeastern biography, she co-led a $750 million initiative to recruit faculty in “strategic academic fields” and led efforts to expand faculty diversity.
Winkelstein herself is a seasoned researcher, having authored more than 175 papers and book chapters, according to her biography. (On the shelves of her office sits a copy of “Orthopedic Biomechanics,” a 2012 book she was the editor of.) Her work, which has been widely cited, focuses on how injuries to the spine and joints cause pain. She received a Presidential Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation and is an elected fellow of several engineering societies.
She discussed how Northeastern’s researchers withstood the Trump administration’s slashes to federal grants, saying the university has “fared really well” in terms of the number of its grants the federal government has terminated since January 2025.
Multiple Northeastern researchers told The News that terminations have hobbled their work, leaving them without sufficient funds and a clear direction. Winkelstein said that in deciding which grant terminations to appeal, a responsibility that falls under the Office of the Provost, she looked through the lens of somebody who has had “a bunch of grants” herself.
“We are working on research that has a national relevance,” she said of Northeastern’s research.
While in the role of interim provost of Penn, in 2022, Winkelstein faced controversy when she and other Penn officials accused then-undergraduate student Mackenzie Fierceton of misrepresenting herself as a first-generation, low-income student and a victim of abuse in her Rhodes Scholarship application. Fierceton, whose parents abused her for years before she was placed in foster care during high school, according to reporting by The New Yorker, attended Penn on a full-ride QuestBridge scholarship. Fierceton’s story and ensuing legal battle with Penn attracted the attention of national media outlets.
Following an investigation, the Rhodes Trust rescinded Fierceton’s scholarship offer. In 2021, she sued the university and reached a settlement in February 2025. Winkelstein declined to comment about the controversy.
Winkelstein returned to the role of deputy provost in 2025. She held the role for two years before President Joseph E. Aoun tapped her to replace former Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs David Madigan, who stepped down in June 2025.
During the interview, Winkelstein repeatedly referenced the university’s co-op program, global network and stance on artificial intelligence.
“We are in a place here where we have always thought about how do we do this better,” she said. “It’s in our DNA.”
