Francisco G. Cigarroa

Who is Francisco G. Cigarroa?

Francisco Gonzalez Cigarroa is an American medical doctor and the chancellor of the University of Texas System. As a Mexican American, Cigarroa is also the first Hispanic to serve as president of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Born in the border city of Laredo in south Texas, Cigarroa graduated from J. W. Nixon High School. In 1979, he earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and received his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas in 1983. He was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha, a national honor society for medical students, residents, scientists, and physicians in the United States and Canada.

During his twelve years of postgraduate training, Cigarroa was chief resident at Massachusetts General Hospital ‒ the teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts ‒ and completed pediatric surgery and transplant surgery fellowships at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

In January 2009, Cigarroa was appointed chancellor of the University of Texas System. He is the first Hispanic to ever lead a major university system in the United States.