CINCINNATI -- The University of Cincinnati's new president Neville Pinto is getting his feet wet in his first week on the job with the groundbreaking ceremony for a new health sciences building on Tuesday.
WATCH Pinto's first news conference as president in the video player below:
The building is scheduled to open in winter 2019 as part of a $480 million medical campus master plan.
Pinto's expertise is in the sciences. He was most recently the acting president and professor of chemical engineering at the University of Louisville. Before that, he spent 26 years on the UC faculty, where he began his career in chemical engineering and established the Adsorption and Ion Exchange laboratory.
Originally from Mumbai, India, Pinto said he's proud of UC's diversity.
"As I begin my first day, my commitment to you is simple: to be guided by the wisdom of this diverse, dynamic and highly accomplished community. My first priority, then, is to listen and learn. I want to engage with as many of you as possible. It will be your ideas and aspirations that will frame our vision and fuel our priorities," Pinto wrote in an email to UC students and staff on Monday.
Pinto takes over from Interim President Beverly Davenport, who accepted an offer to be chancellor of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Former UC president Santa Ono left over the summer to become president and vice chancellor at the University of British Columbia.
