Aviva Abramovsky is the law school's 19th permanent dean and the first woman to hold the position. She is an expert in insurance law, commercial law, regulation of financial entities and legal ethics, and she has written numerous articles and legal treatises, including authoring McKinney's Uniform Commercial Code forms for New York. She is the current editor of LSN Insurance Law, Legislation, & Policy, and she served as the editor and academic advisor for the Connecticut Insurance Law Journal from 2010 to 2011. She also contributed to the British Insurance Law Association's (BILA) 2013 Book Prize winner, Research Handbook on International Insurance and Regulation, and her scholarship has been recognized as a litigation essential by LexisNexis.
Abramovsky has served twice as an academic evaluator for the American Bar Association's federal judiciary committees, once for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito and again for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor. Among other professional leadership positions, she has acted as chair and later executive board member of the insurance law section of the American Association of Law Schools, and as chair of its Committee on Sections. She has also served on the American Association of University Women's International Fellowships Selection Panel.
Prior to her appointment as dean of UB School of Law, Abramovsky was the Kaufman Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and an associate dean at Syracuse University College of Law, where she led the school's internationalization efforts. She spearheaded a Master of Laws (LLM) and two-year Juris Doctor (JD) programs for foreign lawyers, launched a visiting scholars and researchers program, developed partnerships to enable a new international student exchange program, and created a legal English pre-matriculation program.