Samuel L. Stanley Jr. (born January 11, 1954) is an American educator and biomedical researcher. He was the President of Michigan State University from 2019 until November 2022, and he was the President of Stony Brook University from 2009 to 2019. Stanley is one of the founding directors of the Midwest Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research. On October 13, 2022, Stanley announced his resignation as president of Michigan State University, which took effect on November 4, 2022. Early life and education Samuel L. Stanley Jr. attended Winston Churchill High School, a National Blue Ribbon School, located in Potomac, Maryland and graduated in 1972. He then attended The College of the University of Chicago where he graduated with honors in Biological Sciences in 1976 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in the same year. As an Albert Schweitzer fellow of Harvard Medical School, Stanley received his MD specializing in Internal Medicine in 1980. Career He served as a medical intern at Massachusetts General Hospital between 1980 and 1981 and stayed to complete his residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was appointed as an associate member of the American College of Physicians. During his time at Mass General, Stanley met colleague and future wife, Dr. Ellen Li, who was concurrently completing her residency in internal medicine. Between 1983 and 1984, Stanley was a fellow in infectious diseases at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. While there, he was a Pfizer Postdoctoral Fellow in microbiology and immunology. He became a professor in the department of medicine, and served in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Department of Molecular Microbiology. Stanley also served as director of the National Institutes of Health-funded Midwest Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research. In 2006, he was named vice-chancellor for research at Washington University. President of Stony Brook University On May 12, 2009, Stanley was named the fifth president of Stony Brook University, a position he formally assumed on July 1, 2009, making him the first physician to serve as Stony Brook University's president. Stanley's tenure at Stony Brook was marked by enhancing the faculty, boosting minority and low-income student enrollment, raising academic success rates, and increasing research funding and the university's endowment level. Stony Brook University saw its largest donation in school and State University of New York history when