Quick Facts
Biography
Rocky S. Tuan (Chinese: 段崇智) is a scientist and engineer on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, where he holds a number of roles: he is the Arthur J. Rooney, Sr. Professor of Sports Medicine and the Executive Vice Chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, and a professor in the Department of Bioengineering. He is the director of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Engineering and the Center for Military Medicine Research, and an associate director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Tuan is the vice-chancellor-designate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he is currently serving as Distinguished Visiting Professor and Director of the Institute for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine.
Tuan's research efforts focus on bioengineering applied to the musculoskeletal system.
Education
Tuan received his bachelor's degree from Berea College in Kentucky in 1972. He received his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in New York City in 1977, supervised by Zanvil Cohn. He then began as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, first with Melvin J. Glimcher and later with Jerome Gross.
Academic career
Tuan began his independent research career in 1980 when he joined the Department of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1988 he moved to Thomas Jefferson University, where he held joint appointments in the departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He served as the Director of Orthopaedic Research and Vice Chair of the department, and later took on the role of academic director of the institution's MD-PhD joint degree program. He also worked to develop a Ph.D. program in Cell and Tissue Engineering, launched in 1997 and noted at the first such program in the US.
In 2001 Tuan left Jefferson to take an intramural research position at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMD), one of the United States National Institutes of Health, where he became chief of the newly established Cartilage Biology and Orthopaedics Branch. Eight years later, he and his wife, fellow NIH scientist Cecilia Lo, were recruited to the University of Pittsburgh, where Tuan joined the departments of orthopaedic surgery and bioengineering and became the founding director of the newly established Center for Cellular and Molecular Engineering. He was appointed the Arthur J. Rooney, Sr. Professor of Sports Medicine in 2010. Two years later, he assumed the directorship of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Military Medicine Research and associate directorship of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Tuan is a founding editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Stem Cell Research & Therapy and the editor of Birth Defects Research Part C: Embryo Today. He and Lo co-edited a three-volume book titled Developmental Biology Protocols.
In 2017, Tuan was appointed as the eighth vice-chancellor and president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in his native city. He will take up the post in January 2018.
Research
Tuan's research group focuses on bioengineering and tissue regeneration as applied to the musculoskeletal system, with an interest in translational research. Tuan's group has expertise in the study of adult stem cells and in the development of the musculoskeletal system. Among their efforts is a research project aimed at using 3D printing technology to restore function of joints damaged by diseases such as osteoarthritis, and work funded in 2016 to study model systems on the International Space Station.
Awards and honors
- Elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, 2000
- Marshall R. Urist Award, Orthopaedic Research Society, 2004
- Carnegie Science Center Life Sciences Award, 2016
- Clemson Award for Contributions to the Literature, Society for Biomaterials, 2016