LSI adds new affiliate faculty role
ANN ARBOR — The University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute is expanding its scientific reach with the addition of an affiliate faculty role, announces LSI Director Roger D. Cone.
Affiliate faculty members will have labs located at the LSI — where they will have an adjunct appointment in addition to a tenure-track appointment in another unit on campus.
“Our affiliate faculty members and their labs will be active participants in the flow of ideas and intellectual life of the institute,” says Cone. “They will participate in our scientific meetings and social events. They will contribute new ideas and expertise, while continuing to strengthen the connections between all of the campus bioscience units.”
Unlike principal institute members, affiliates will not participate in recruitments or other roles related to the administration of the institute, he notes.
“Having the ability to expand our ranks with affiliate faculty will also allow us to partner in new ways with departments across campus to recruit world-class scientists to Michigan,” adds Cone, who is also a professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the U-M Medical School and of molecular, of cellular and developmental biology at the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and vice provost and director of the U-M biosciences initiative.
The new affiliate faculty members include:
- Ryoma “Puck” Ohi, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at the Medical School, who comes to U-M from Vanderbilt University. His research program focuses on the microtubule cytoskeleton, a dynamic network of rod-like filaments that participate in a broad spectrum of cellular processes ranging from intracellular trafficking to cell division. His lab specializes in the functions of microtubules during cell division and applies information gleaned from their studies to identify novel anti-cancer targets.
- Carole Parent, Ph.D., who joins U-M after serving as deputy director of the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute. Parent is the inaugural Raymond W. Ruddon Collegiate Professor in Cancer Biology and Pharmacology in the Department of Pharmacology at the Medical School. Her research program focuses on understanding how cells detect and respond to external chemotactic signals and, in particular, how the spatial and temporal relay of chemotactic signals between cells impacts single and group cell migration. Her work has implications in a variety of processes, including inflammation, tissue repair, and cancer metastasis.
- Russell J.H. Ryan, M.D., an assistant professor of pathology at the U-M Medical School, who recently completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and served as an instructor in pathology at Harvard Medical School. Ryan’s work focuses on mechanisms that regulate oncogene expression in B-cell malignancies. He is the recipient of a K08 Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award from the National Cancer Institute, and is a collaborator of faculty member Ivan Maillard, M.D., Ph.D.
- Matthew Soellner, Ph.D., an assistant professor of chemistry at the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and research assistant professor of internal medicine at the Medical School. Soellner’s research focuses on disrupting protein-protein interactions involved in cancer, and he is a collaborator of faculty member Anna Mapp, Ph.D.