Meredith Hay, Ph.D. is the former Executive Vice President and Provost of The University of Arizona. Dr. Hay, as second in command, served as the University of Arizona’s chief operating officer with responsibilities for the entire $1.8B university budget including the Arizona Health Sciences Center. Currently, Dr. Hay leads an active cardiovascular and brain research laboratory at the University of Arizona College Of Medicine were she is a tenured Full Professor. For the past 30 years, her NIH funded laboratory has studied the effects of ovarian hormone replacement on blood pressure regulation. Her and her research team were first to discover that estrogen acts on brain cells to modulate blood pressure.

Dr. Hay is President and founder of a new Tucson biotechnology company, ProNeurogen, Inc. ProNeurogen is a preclinical and clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel peptide based therapeutics to treat dementia caused by heart disease.

Dr. Hay is actively involved in the Tucson community and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the YWCA, the Working Board for the National Institute for Civil Discourse, The Beacon Group, The January 8^th Foundation, San Miguel High School of Tucson Board of Trustees and Sinfonia, Healthcare Corp., LLC. She has also served as an active member on the Arizona Bioscience Advisory Group, the Advisory Board for the Phoenix Biomedical Campus and in 2010 was named among Arizona’s Top Women Executives. Prior to coming to Arizona, Dr. Hay served as Vice President for Research at the University of Iowa.   Dr. Hay, a Texas native, earned her B.A. in psychology from the University of Colorado, Denver, her M.S. in neurobiology from the University Texas at San Antonio, and her Ph.D. in cardiovascular pharmacology from the University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Antonio.