Antonio Merlo, Bocconi Alumnus, New Dean of NYU's Faculty of Arts and Science

A distinguished political economist and also water polo coach, Antonio Merlo, a Bocconi alumnus and current Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Rice University, has just been named the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of New York University's Faculty of Arts and Science. He will take up his duties at NYU this summer.

A graduate in Economics and Social Sciences from Bocconi in 1987, Merlo then obtained his PhD in Economics from NYU in 1992, where he received the Dean's Outstanding Dissertation Award. He was then on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was also chair of the Economics Department, and then taught at NYU and the University of Minnesota. In 2014 he joined Rice University where he is currently Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Director of the Rice Initiative for the Study of Economics.

In tandem with his academic career Merlo has also proved an accomplished and award-winning college water polo coach at NYU, Penn, Minnesota and lastly at Rice, winning among other things the Coach of the Year Award for the Collegiate Water Polo Association in 2013, 2017 and 2018.