Message from the Head

Welcome to our newly up-dated, and we hope eye-catching, home page! Many people in the department were involved in this effort.

The new academic year is marked by the admission of a cadre of outstanding students into the Ph.D. program. The department currently has two NIH funded training grants, Pharmacological Sciences Training Program (PSTP) and Lung Biology and Pathobiology Training Program. The Graduate Committee's job was not made easy by such a diverse and excellent applicant pool. We wish the new students the best in their years of study in the department. Some of our students have recently finished their training and have moved on to complete postdoctoral training. Their current positions are listed below:

 

• Angie Bair, PhD: Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Medicine, Section of Nephrology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University Medical School, Boston, MA
  
  
• Michael T. Broman, MD, PhD: Resident, University of Chicago
  
  
• Fadi Khasawneh, PhD: Assistant Professor, Western University of Health Sciences
  
  
• Angela Kwiatek, PhD: Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL
  
  
• David Jho, MD, PhD: Resident, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University, Boston, MA


• Phoebe Lin, MD, PhD: Medical Resident, University of California, San Francisco


• Douglas Yau, PhD: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Chicago


• Santosh Ramamurthy, PhD: Postdoctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD


• Barry Kreutz, PhD: Postdoctoral Fellow, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard University, Boston, MA


• Jasmina Profirovic, PhD: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Illinois at Chicago


• Maria Konstantoulaki, PhD: Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Medicine, University College, London, England


• Ayesha Shajahan, PhD: Postdoctoral Fellow, Georgetown University, Washington, DC


• Michael Holinstat, PhD: Postdoctoral Fellow, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN

Our move into the new building in the last year was mostly uneventful.  It has taken time to adjust to the new open design of the labs, but by all accounts the faculty, fellows, and students have begun to flourish in their new digs.

In the last year, multiple new NIH R01 research grants have been awarded to faculty members in the department. Recent awardees include Dolly Mehta, Xiaoping Du, and Kishore Wary. There are five faculty members in the department with 3 or more R01s. Two NIH Program Project grants were funded in the department in the last year: (1) Asrar Malik, Randy Skidgel, Tatyana Voyno-Yasenetskaya, Richard Minshall, Dan Predescu, Steven Vogel, and C. Tiruppathi; (2) Asrar Malik, Richard Ye, Chinnaswamy Tiruppathi and Richard Minshall.  Joseph Mclaughlin has received the Parker B. Francis Award.  Yidan Zhao and Asrar Malik have received a research grant as a part of the UIC Stem Cell Center funded by the state of Illinois. There are several American Heart Association Grants-in-Aid awarded in the last year to faculty members in the department: Stephen Lam, Gias Ahmmed, and Sanda Predescu. The Toxicology Research Lab under Alex Lyubimov's leadership has had a very productive year. The department currently ranks in the top ten in NIH funding at the national level.

The University of Illinois Board of Trustees has approved the formation of the Center for Lung and Vascular Biology, which will be a defined research center in the College of Medicine. Asrar Malik will be the director and John Christman, head of the Pulmonary Division and Professor of Medicine, is the clinical director. The intent of the Center is to bring together a group of investigators working in these areas and to recruit outstanding NIH funded junior faculty members. This center will be important in the development of multi-disciplinary research and training programs in lung and vascular biology and the fund raising efforts and endowments coordinated by the Office of Development of the university.

The Department has added faculty on a conjoint basis with Department of Medicine (John Christman from Vanderbilt, Tohru Fukai from Emory); Center for Lung and Vascular Biology (Kishore Wary from Texas A & M and Masuko Ushio-Fukai from Emory) and Department of Dermatology (Jinsong Xu from UCSF). These are all outstanding individuals who add depth and breadth to our research programs.  Other individuals recruited into the department on the research-track include Kurt Bachmaier and Yidan Zhao from University of Toronto, Joseph Mclaughlin from Vanderbilt, and Anke Di from University of Chicago.

Asrar B. Malik, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor and Head