INDIANAPOLIS—Four Indiana University School of Medicine professors join a record-setting group of 15 IU faculty members appointed as distinguished professors by the IU Board of Trustees this year.
Lynda Bonewald, PhD; Loren Field, PhD, G. David Roodman, MD, PhD, and Chandan Sen, PhD, all received the title, announced last week. Distinguished professor is the university’s highest academic title, given to its most outstanding and renowned scholars and researchers. The 15 recipients for 2020 represent the largest number of new distinguished professors to be appointed in the university’s history.
Bonewald, professor of anatomy and cell biology and of orthopedic surgery, is the founding director of the Indiana Center for Musculoskeletal Health, which has more than 100 members from 36 departments on four campuses. She has been continually funded by the National Institutes of Health for more than 30 years and is responsible for tools used by researchers globally to determine osteocyte biology and function.
Read more: Record number of faculty appointed as distinguished professors
Field, professor of medicine, of physiology and biophysics, and of pediatrics, and his colleagues were the first to show that relatively simple genetic modifications can induce mammalian heart cells to regenerate. His current research is focused on identifying genes and molecules that promote heart muscle regeneration by coaxing healthy cells to proliferate. The success of this research would offer the potential for seriously ill patients whose tissue has been damaged by heart attack to “re-grow” their own hearts.
Roodman is the Kenneth Wiseman Professor of Medicine. His research focuses on osteoclasts and osteoblast activity in both normal and pathological states, including Paget’s disease and multiple myeloma. Roodman’s lab pioneered the development of long-term marrow culture techniques to study osteoclast differentiation and activity.
Sen is the J. Stanley Battersby Chair and professor of surgery. He and a team of more than 30 scientists study how to tap into the power of regenerative medicine and engineering to heal burns, develop new therapies for diabetic complications, treat injured soldiers, and even regrow damaged and diseased tissue. Sen has published more than 300 articles and is cited more than 2,000 times a year in literature.
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IU School of Medicine is the largest medical school in the U.S. and is annually ranked among the top medical schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. The school offers high-quality medical education, access to leading medical research and rich campus life in nine Indiana cities, including rural and urban locations consistently recognized for livability.