I am pleased to announce that Professor Brenton R. Graveley, Ph.D., has accepted the position of chair of the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences, in the School of Medicine. Brent will begin in his new leadership position effective February 2, 2018.

Since the inception of his School of Medicine faculty appointment in 1999, Brent has enjoyed a distinguished career. He is the current associate director of the Institute for Systems Genomics, director of the UConn Stem Cell Institute, and John and Donna Krenicki Professor in Genomics and Personalized Healthcare. He has attained national and international recognition for his work on RNA biology, a notable example of which is his accomplishment in developing a comprehensive map of functional human protein-RNA interactions. Among a number of other scientific achievements, Brent has authored over 100 research articles, 16 of which have appeared in Cell, Science or Nature. As a further recognition, he is also a member of the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research. This has enabled Brent to have a keen insight into and steer the genomic funding priorities of the NIH. Brent has been funded by multiple NIH R01, R21, U54, U41 and R35 grants, representing both individual and large multi-investigator, multidisciplinary consortium projects. In fact, he has just received a large project grant from NIH titled, “A Comprehensive Functional Map of Human Protein-RNA Interactions” with a total cost of about $10M.

I would also like to take this opportunity to extend my sincere thanks to the entire search committee for its excellent work during the search and selection process. Led by its chair Dr. George Kuchel, the committee included Drs. Stormy Chamberlain, Rachel O’Neill, Travis Hinson, Kimberly Dodge, Christopher Heinen and Andrew Winokur.

Please join me in extending an enthusiastic welcome to Brent as he assumes his new role in the School of Medicine.

Bruce T. Liang, MD, FACC
Dean, School of Medicine

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