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John A. Pelesko is the Interim President of New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), a mathematician, academic leader, and NJIT alumnus. Following a unanimous vote of the NJIT Board of Trustees, he began his term on August 4, 2026. He previously served as NJIT's Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs — the university's chief academic officer, with responsibility for its six colleges, its research enterprise, and all academic units.
As provost beginning in 2023, Pelesko shaped much of NJIT's academic direction. He co-chaired the steering committee for the university's strategic plan, NJIT Makes an Innovation Nexus, and led the development of AI@NJIT, a university-wide strategy to prepare students, faculty, and academic programs for an AI-driven economy. He launched the Student Success Nexus to improve student outcomes, established the Center for Educational Innovation and Excellence and the Center for Student Entrepreneurship, guided the rollout of a new decentralized budget model, and recruited a new senior academic leadership team while advancing multi-year faculty hiring and strategic enrollment plans.
Pelesko came to NJIT after more than two decades at the University of Delaware, where he served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences — the university's largest college — and earlier as associate dean, department chair, and professor of mathematical sciences. He began his academic career at the California Institute of Technology and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
An internationally recognized applied mathematician, Pelesko is known for his research on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and the mathematics of self-assembly. He is the author of several books, including Self Assembly: The Science of Things That Put Themselves Together and Modeling MEMS and NEMS, along with more than forty peer-reviewed articles and a substantial body of work in mathematics education and STEM teacher preparation. His research has been supported throughout his career by the National Science Foundation and other funders.
A New Jersey native who grew up in Roselle, Pelesko earned his Ph.D. in mathematical sciences from NJIT in 1997 and his B.S. in pure mathematics, with honors, from the University of Massachusetts Boston. He has been recognized with NJIT's Outstanding Alumni Award. Known for regularly visiting classrooms and for an accessible, plainspoken style, he calls his return to NJIT a homecoming, and sees the interim presidency as a chance to serve the university that helped set the course of his own life.
