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Credit: Joseph Blumberg
Kenneth J. Breslauer
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President Richard L. McCormick has appointed Kenneth J. Breslauer to the new position of vice president for health science partnerships at Rutgers.
Breslauer will work with McCormick and Executive Vice President Philip Furmanski to develop and promote inter-institutional initiatives in the biosciences. Breslauer will continue as the Linus C. Pauling Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and dean and director of the Division of Life Sciences.
McCormick pointed out that Breslauer is already involved in many of the programs for which he will now assume responsibility, including the establishment of the Stem Cell Institute of New Jersey (with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and other New Jersey academic and research centers); the New Jersey Public University Research Foundation, a partnership of Rutgers, UMDNJ and the New Jersey Institute of Technology; the Cancer Institute of New Jersey; the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials; the Human Genetics Institute; the New Jersey High Field NMR Facility; and the new Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Joint Committee on Major Research Equipment Funding Proposals.
Breslauer’s new duties also will include establishing “biomedical swap teams” in New Jersey that can serve state and national needs through better integration of existing and future statewide expertise in the health sciences. To this end, Breslauer will identify and coordinate faculty across Rutgers units with the appropriate scientists at UMDNJ and other research universities, including private sector enterprises. These statewide scientific teams will allow New Jersey to better compete for major public and private funding opportunities in the biomedical sciences, while providing the state with well-focused entities to turn to for input and advice.
“New Jersey is a national powerhouse in the biomedical sciences; however, due to fragmentation and less than optimal integration between existing programs, across both the public and private sectors, New Jersey runs the risk of losing its strong position in the health sciences,” Breslauer said. “Rutgers can and must take a leadership role in coordinating statewide initiatives in the health sciences so as to ensure that citizens of New Jersey and the world reap the associated medical and economic benefits.”
Breslauer joined Rutgers in 1974 and has been dean of the Division of Life Sciences since 1996. He is considered the world’s foremost expert in biocalorimetry, the study of energy changes, structures and forces in the molecules of living organisms.
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