Saying Goodbye to Takayama, Welcoming Fan
This month we say goodbye to MCIRCC's inaugural Associate Director, Shuichi (Shu) Takayama, PhD, who will be moving on to the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Takayama has been with MCIRCC since the beginning, serving as the first (and for a while, only) associate director. In his three years working with MCIRCC, he played a pivotal role in helping to foster strong and lasting partnerships between the Medical School and the College of Engineering.
“Shu represents the ideal collaborator and team science leader. Selfless and unafraid, Shu simply said yes to help develop and lead MCIRCC as its inaugural Associate Director. He did this through action and example. This has been critical to the convergence of Engineering and Medicine within MCIRCC and the life-saving research it is undertaking,” said MCIRCC Executive Director Kevin Ward.
Aside from the close clinical collaborations and insights from members, Takayama also mentioned that he’ll miss the parties, especially the food, at Kevin’s house with the MCIRCC team.
“I'm very happy to see the tremendous growth of MCIRCC. I learned a lot from Kevin and all the members about critical care, interdisciplinary projects, preparing large center grants. It is my hope that I’ll be able to take what I learned to this new position,” Takayama said.
Takayama will serve as Professor, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, and Price Gilbert, Jr. Chair in Regenerative Engineering and Medicine in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology & Emory University School of Medicine. In this new role, Takayama says he looks forward to being a “bit uncomfortable and disoriented” and is excited to find “unexpected directions and new ideas.”
We wish Takayma the best of luck in his new position and hope he continues to innovate critical care for patients and physicians alike.
To fill his shoes, we welcome Xudong (Sherman) Fan, PhD, who is a professor of biomedical engineering. A member of MCIRCC, he will now serve as an associate director helping to further promote the relationship between engineering and medicine. Professor Fan’s research interests include photonic bio/chemical sensors, micro/nano-fluidics, and nano-photonics for disease diagnostics and bio/chemical molecule analysis.
"I'm excited about fostering scientists and engineers so they can seize the opportunity and apply technologies developed in the lab to the life-saving endeavors of MCIRCC,” Fan said.