Dr. Daniele Struppa

Daniele C. Struppa, Ph.D. was inaugurated as Chapman University’s 13th president on September 1, 2016, and served in that role until September 1, 2025. He now holds the Parker Kennedy Chair in Mathematics, having previously served as the Donald Bren Presidential Chair in Mathematics.

Since joining Chapman as Provost in 2006, Struppa has been instrumental in guiding the university’s transformation from a regional teaching institution to an internationally recognized R2 research university, a distinction achieved by only 10% of U.S. universities. In 2007, he became Chapman’s first chancellor before being appointed president.

A revered mathematician, Struppa brought in world-class faculty during his time as provost and president. He ensured that Chapman invested in scientific infrastructure, including the opening of a cutting-edge facility for the Institute for Quantum Studies, which is housed at the new Daniele C. Struppa Research Park.

Struppa came to Chapman University from George Mason University, where he served as director of the Center for the Applications of Mathematics, as chair of the Department of Mathematical Sciences and as associate dean for graduate studies. In 1997, he was selected dean of George Mason’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Prior to his tenure at George Mason, Struppa held positions at the University of Milano (Milan, Italy), the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy) and the University of Calabria (Calabria, Italy).

Struppa earned his laurea in mathematics from the University of Milan, Italy in 1977, and received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1981.

In recognition of his work, he has been awarded the Bartolozzi Prize from the Italian Mathematical Union (1981), and the Matsumae Medal from the Matsumae International Foundation of Tokyo (1987). Additionally, Struppa received the prestigious Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences for a paper he co-authored (2017).

In 2006, the BIO-IT Coalition (a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. and dedicated to the support of bioinformatics) established a new prize in Struppa’s honor — the “Professor Daniele Struppa Award” — which is designed to honor high school teachers in math, science and technology.

Struppa is the author of more than 200 refereed publications, and he is the editor of several volumes. He has edited or co-authored more than 10 books, including Bicomplex Holomorphic Functions (2015), Regular Functions of a Quaternionic Variable (2013), Noncommutative Functional Calculus: Theory and Applications of Slice Hyperholomorphic Functions (2011), Analysis of Dirac Systems and Computational Algebra (2004), Fundamentals of Algebraic Microlocal Analysis (1999) and The Fundamental Principle for Systems of Convolution Equations (1983).

While serving as chancellor, Struppa continued his scholarly research focusing on Fourier analysis and its applications to a variety of problems including the algebraic analysis of systems of differential equations, signal processing and pattern recognition. Some of his recent work applies these ideas and methods to problems ranging from denoising to bio-contaminant protection to proteomics of cancerous cells.