Shu Chien
May 6, 2016
Shu Chien received his medical degree from National Taiwan University and his doctorate in physiology from Columbia University, where he remained as a faculty member, rising to full professor in 1969. In 1987, he took a sabbatical leave to establish the Institute of Biomedical Sciences in Academia Sinica in Taiwan. In 1988, he joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego, where he founded the Department of Bioengineering in 1994.
Currently, Dr. Chien is the Y.C. Fung Professor of Bioengineering and Medicine and Director of the Institute of Engineering in Medicine at UC San Diego. His research emphases are blood rheology in health and disease and the effects of mechanical forces on signal transduction and genetic/epigenetic regulation in relation to atherogenesis. His inventions include the use of Ras negative mutant to prevent artery restenosis, the development of a microarray system to determine the optimum microenvironment for stem cell proliferation and differentiation, and an acoustic mechanogenetic system for remote controlled gene expression and cell activation.
Dr. Chien has served as president of the Microcirculatory Society, the American Physiological Society, the Biomedical Engineering Society, the International Society of Biorheology, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
He has received honorary doctoral degrees from six universities and has been awarded the Melville Medal (twice), the Fahraeus Medal, the Landis Award, the ALZA Award, the Zweifach Award, the Poiseuille Medal, the Galletti Award, the Revelle Medal, the Asian American Engineer of the Year Award, and the Founders Award of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2009, he received the Presidential Prize for Life Sciences of ROC in Taiwan. In 2011, he was bestowed the National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States, by President Barack Obama.
Dr. Chien is one of 14 scientists who are members of all three U.S. National Academies (Engineering, Medicine, and Sciences). He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Academia Sinica; a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Physiological Society, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the National Academy of Inventors.
