Subject:

Announcing Director of the Institute of Engineering in Medicine

I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Andrew McCulloch as
Director of the Institute of Engineering in Medicine (IEM)
(https://iem.ucsd.edu/), an Organized Research Unit at UC San Diego,
effective November 1, 2019.

Dr. McCulloch is currently a Distinguished Professor in the departments
of Bioengineering and Medicine. He has a distinguished academic and
research history having served as vice chair of the Bioengineering
Department from 2002 to 2005 and chair from 2005 to 2008. He was an NSF
Presidential Young Investigator and is a Fellow of the American
Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He has been both the
Konrad Witzig Memorial Lecturer and the Donald Wassenberg Memorial
Lecturer. Recently, he was elected a Fellow of the Cardiovascular
Section of the American Physiological Society. He is also chair of the
Physiome and Systems Biology Committee of the International Union of
Physiological Sciences. He received his Ph.D. in 1986 from the
University of Auckland, New Zealand in Engineering Science and
Physiology.

Dr. McCulloch’s current research interests include developing
multi-scale models of heart failure and arrythmias from molecular to
patient scales. He collaborates with the Sulpizio Family Cardiovascular
Center and Rady Children’s Hospital in the use of computational modeling
and machine learning technology to improve diagnosis and treatment
planning for heart disease in adults and children. His lab also uses
in-vitro systems for understanding the molecular networks regulating
cardiac biology and gene-targeted mouse models for investigating heart
disease mechanisms.

The Institute for Engineering in Medicine was established in July 2008
and currently has over 200 outstanding faculty from UC San Diego’s
School of Medicine, Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences,
and Jacobs School of Engineering. The mission of IEM is to translate
creative ideas into clinical medicine and novel products that will
transform patient care and improve the health and well-being.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Emeritus Shu
Chien for his many years of dedicated service as founding director of
IEM. During his tenure, he oversaw the establishment of over 15
interdisciplinary centers within IEM, the establishment of the highly
successful Galvanizing Engineering in Medicine program in partnership
with the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute, and the
inception of the prestigious Siebel Scholars program.

In addition to spearheading the development of IEM in 2008, he was the
founding chair of the Department of Bioengineering, founding director of
the Whitaker Institute for Biomedical Engineering, and founding director
of the UC-wide multi-campus research unit, the Bioengineering Institute
of California. He is also a Presidential Science Medal recipient and a
member of all three national academies. You can read more about his
accomplishments here:
http://jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=2878

Please join me in thanking Professor Emeritus Chien for his service and
welcoming Dr. McCulloch as director.

Sandra A. Brown Vice Chancellor for Research