Professor Margaret Gardner became President and Vice-Chancellor of Monash University on September 1, 2014. Prior to joining Monash, Professor Gardner was Vice-Chancellor and President of RMIT from April 2005 until August 2014. She has extensive academic experience, having held various leadership positions in Australian universities throughout her career, including at the University of Queensland and Griffith University.

Armed with a first class honours degree in Economics and a PhD from the University of Sydney, in 1988 she was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow spending time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, and the University of California, Berkeley.