Dr. Valerian Kagan is a Professor and Vice-Chairman in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health as well as a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, the Department of Radiation Oncology, and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh.  He is also the Director of the Center for Free Radical and Antioxidant Health.

Dr. Kagan earned his PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics at the MV Lomonosov Moscow State University and his DSc from the USSR Academy of Sciences. After many years as a Research Associate and then an Assistant Research Professor at MV Lomonosov Moscow State University, Dr. Kagan left Russia for the Institute of Physiology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where he was the Head and Research Professor with the Membrane Biostabilization Group. He then moved to the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, before he came to the University of Pittsburgh in 1992.

Dr. Kagan is currently an investigator/co-investigator for numerous grants, including: 1.) Carbon Nanotubes Biodegradation by Neutrophil Myeloperoxidase; 2.) Cardiolipin in Mechanisms of Acute Lung Injury; 3.) Mitochondrial Targeting Against Radiation Damage; 4.) Oxygenated Species of Cardiolipins as Biomarkers of Mitochondrial Dysfunction; 5.) Mapping Lipid Oxidation in Traumatic Brain Injury by Mass Spectrometric Imaging; 6.) Lipids and Myeloid Cell Function in Cancer; and 7.) Pathogenetic Mechanisms of Barth Syndrome.

He is the Executive Editor for Antioxidants and Redox Signaling and the Associate Editor of Chemistry and Physics of Lipids.  He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He is the author of >650 publications and Dr. Kagan has been an invited keynote speaker, plenary speaker, or session speaker at more than 300 congresses and meetings and presented more than 700 posters.

View a list of Dr. Kagan’s publications here.