Lisa Staiano-Coico

Lisa Staiano-Coico
Lisa Staiano-Coico, President of City College of New York, August 2010.
In office August 2010 – October 2016
Preceded by	Gregory Howard Williams
Personal details
Born	1956 Brooklyn, New York
Spouse(s)	Richard Coico
Alma mater	Brooklyn College Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences
Profession	higher education administrator

Lisa Staiano-Coico, or Lisa S. Coico, was the twelfth president of City College of New York from August 2010 until October 2016. A graduate of Brooklyn College in 1976, Coico was the first alumna of City University of New York to head City College. She stepped down from the presidency on October 7, 2016.

Lisa Staiano-Coico, whose name also appears as Lisa S. Coico, is a native of Brooklyn, New York.

Staiano-Coico received a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology from Brooklyn College of The City University of New York (CUNY), in 1976, and a doctorate from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences (GSMS, formerly known as Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences), in 1981.

At GSMS, Staiano-Coico was a research assistant and graduate student of Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz, professor of biochemistry, whose interests included cell differentiation and carcinogenesis, and flow cytometry techniques to characterize epithelial differentiation in particular. Staiano-Coico also studied with Myron Melamed, a GSMC professor of biology and a scientist with an international reputation, who had co-authored the seminal cytometry publication in Science, "Spectrophotometer: New Instruments for Ultra-rapid Cell Analysis," with Louis Kamentsky of Columbia University's IBM Watson Laboratory) and Marc E. Weksler, a professor of medicine and eventual Irving Sherwood Wright Professor of Geriatrics at Weill Cornell. Staiano-Coico is one among many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows trained with the Darzynkiewicz, Weksler, and Melamed team.

From 1981 to 1983, Staiano-Coico trained as a post-doctoral researcher at the GSMS-affiliated organization, Sloan-Kettering Institute. There, Staiano-Coico participated in faculty sponsored research in teaching laboratory settings, such as the Laboratory of Investigative Cytology, and Walker Laboratory in Rye, New York.