LEADERSHIP

Professor Andrew McCulloch was appointed as Director of the Institute of Engineering in Medicine (IEM), an Organized Research Unit at UC San Diego, effective November 1, 2019 by Vice Chancellor Sandra Brown. He was chosen as the inaugural candidate for the Shu Chien Chair. Dr. McCulloch is a Fellow of the American Physiological Society, Cardiovascular Section, a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, as well as a Fellow of the International Association of Medical and Biological Engineering. His consistent service to the department and university are exemplary and Dr. McCulloch remains one of the most valued senior members of the Department of Bioengineering. Dr. McCulloch is widely regarded as an international leader in modeling the biomechanics and electrical signaling of the heart. His approach is the most advanced form of precision medicine in cardiology today. Dr. McCulloch teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses, with consistently high CAPE scores. Dr. McCulloch continues to direct the direct the UC San Diego Interfaces Graduate Training program that administers the Interdisciplinary PhD Specialization in Multi-Scale Biology that offers seven laboratory-based courses and is supported by an NIH T32 that was renewed recently with an impact score of 10. Dr. McCulloch continues to serve as the Editor in Chief of Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models, the Associate Editor of PLoS Computational Biology, and an Editorial Board Member of the Biophysical Journal. Dr. McCulloch supports our diversity mission by serving on the Diversity Outreach Collaboration, by serving as a member of the IRACDA (NIH’s Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Awards) program and has successfully recruited URM students into two of his NIH supported training grants.

Professor Palsson is the Primary Investigator for the Systems Biology Research Group at UCSD, and in partnership with the Norvo Nordisk Foundation, also leads the Center for Biosustainability which has raised just under $500M in funding from private foundations. His own group, the SBRG has brought in almost $100M of research funding to the Bioengineering Department. Professor Palsson has over 500 publications, 4 textbooks and has 89,695 citations (Google Scholar 08.17.2020) and was recently recognized in the Web of Science “2019 Highly Cited Researchers list”. He was selected by Thomson Reuters as one of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” in 2015 and was awarded the International Metabolic Engineering Award in 2016. Professor Palsson is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2006), and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2010). Educationally, Professor Palsson has developed new course content in the field of data science for both our undergraduate and graduate courses, serves on average 50 thesis and exam committees per review period and has mentored hundreds of students, postdocs and visiting scholars in his UCSD lab. Outside the University, Dr. Palsson has an amazing record of service to the scientific community. He given over 200 invited talks and keynote speeches, serves as a reviewer on many numerous publications including: AIChE Journal, AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, Annals of Bioengineering, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Bioinformatics, Biophysical Journal, Biotechniques, Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Biotechnology Progress, BMC Central, Cellular Engineering, Chemical Engineering Science, Experimental Hematology, Human Gene Therapy, Journal of Biotechnology, Journal of Hematotherapy, Journal of Theoretical Biology, NASA, Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, NIH, NSF, Science, Trends in Biotechnology to name a few.

Professor Kun Zhang, Chair of the Department of Bioengineering was selected as the inaugural Chair-holder for his exceptional academic accomplishments and outstanding contributions to teaching, diversity and service. Regarded internationally as one of the pioneers in genomic technology and a major leader in single cell research, his research focuses on developing molecular techniques and engineering platforms for building single-cell maps of multiple human organs; analyzing the genome, epigenome and transcriptome; and applying cell imaging and lineage tracing — all with an eye toward potentially transforming how we understand and treat disease.

A leader in the single cell and high-throughput sequencing field, Dr. Zhang has made outstanding contributions to innovative and pace-setting research on single-cell genomics and its application to several human organs and tissues. He and his laboratory have pioneered several technologies, including a “single-nucleus RNA sequence” method that has transformed the field by making it feasible to study a large number of human neurons at single-cell resolution.

In addition, Dr. Zhang has made major contributions to teaching through his excellent classroom and laboratory education as well as his wonderful mentoring of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. As co-chair and then the chair of the Graduate Studies Committee (GSC) of the Department of Bioengineering, Dr. Zhang has made important contributions to different aspects of graduate education. He has greatly improved the outcome of graduate student recruitment, and his dedicated work has led to an improvement of the acceptance rate by the students who have been offered admission and enhanced the diversity of our graduate students. Besides his service as GSC chair and department chair, Dr. Zhang has served on several campus/JSOE committees during this review period, i.e., High-Throughput Genomics Steering Committee, Institute of Engineering in Medicine Academic Personnel Committee, and JSOE E4 committee. He has served as Director of the JSOE Cell Engineering Research Center core facility director. He also served on three NIH review panels (two for Genomics, Computational Biology and Technology and one for Re-Building a Kidney).