Bugliarello, George

On October 15, 1973, George Bugliarello was inaugurated 13th President of what was then known as the Polytechnic Institute of New York. President Bugliarello took the reins at the most precarious time in Polytechnic’s long history. Amid a national economic crisis in the 1970s, several private academic institutions in New York City were on the brink of collapse, including Polytechnic and New York University. On the brink of bankruptcy, New York University was forced to sell its University Heights campus in the Bronx to the City of New York. New York University also lost its School of Engineering in a merger with Polytechnic University of Brooklyn, which was then renamed Polytechnic University of New York. George Bugliarello, who served as President for between 1973 and 1994 and subsequently served as President emeritus and Chancellor until 2011, proved to be lucky Number 13 for the Institute and for the struggling neighborhood of Downtown Brooklyn.

Giorgio Bugliarello was born Georgio Bugliarello-Wondrich on May 20, 1927 to Spera Bugliarello-Wondrich and Colonel Federico Bugliarello Magnano di San Lio in Trieste, Italy. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Padua where he earned a Dottore in Ingegneria (Dott.Ing.) in Civil Engineering. In 1954 he earned a Master’s in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota on a Fulbright Scholarship. He then attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology's School of Engineering from 1956-1959, earning a doctorate in Civil Engineering and Hydronamics. George Bugliarello married his wife of over 50 years, Virginia Harding, in 1959. The couple had two sons, Nicholas and David.

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