Stephen Chan, MD, PhD, has been elected the Vice President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). In this capacity, he will serve on the ASCI council for 4 years, and he will assume the role of President in the 2027-2028 cycle.
Since arriving at the University of Pittsburgh in 2015, Steve has established an impressive research enterprise, leading to his appointment as Director of the Vascular Medicine Institute in 2020. His group has published seminal basic and translational discoveries in journals such as Science, Cell, Cell Metabolism, The Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Science Translational Medicine in the field of pulmonary vascular biology and more recently in mechanisms of heart-lung-brain communication. Steve has served as primary mentor for over 35 trainees who carry a track record of young investigator awards from the American Heart Association (AHA), American College of Cardiology (ACC), and the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute (PVRI), multiple career development awards, and independent NIH R-level funding. Steve directs a clinical program of excellence in pulmonary hypertension at UPMC. He also founded a humanitarian telemedicine organization, the Addis Clinic, serving east Africa and a biotech company, Synhale Therapeutics, developing heart and lung disease therapies.
As the Vitalant Chair in Vascular Medicine and a tenured Professor in the Division of Cardiology, Steve currently leads an American Heart Association Strategically Focused Research Network Inflammation in Cardiac and Neurovascular Disease, three program grants from the WoodNext Foundation (totaling >$20M), and multiple NIH R-level and U-level awards. He has received research awards from the AHA, ACC, and Harvard Medical School. Steve was elected to the Association of University Cardiologists and the Association of American Physicians in 2022 as well as the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2016, for which he currently serves as a Deputy Editor for its journal, JCI Insight.
Steve’s undergraduate training was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before entering the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of California, San Francisco. He completed residency training at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and undertook clinical and research fellowship training in Cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Steve joined the faculty at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2009 and was promoted to Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in 2011.
In his new position with the ASCI, Steve will lead and shape programs to advocate for and empower U.S. physician-scientists. Such initiatives will involve improvements in communicating the physician-scientist’s worth to the public and potential trainees; establishing new partnerships with industry and philanthropy; and conceiving collaborative scientific programs that unite this community.