Yoram Vodovotz, PhD
Yoram Vodovotz, PhD
At the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Yoram Vodovotz is a Professor in the Department of Surgery with secondary appointments in the Department of Computational & Systems Biology, the Department of Bioengineering, the Department of Immunology, the Department of Communication Science and Disorders (of the School of Health and Rehabilitation Science), and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. He also is the Director of the Center for Inflammation and Regenerative Modeling at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Dr. Vodovotz received his BS degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; he graduated with distinction with a triple major in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Genetics. In 1993 he received his PhD in Immunology from Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences. In addition to post-graduate training at Cornell, he also worked at the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, in the Laboratory of Chemoprevention and the Radiation Biology Branch.
Dr. Vodovotz is a member of the Society for Complex Acute Illness (of which he is a past-president) and of the Shock Society. For his research efforts, Dr. Vodovotz has been honored most recently as the Keynote Speaker, NIH Bioinformatics Summit 2009; the IGI Global’s 4th Annual Excellence in Research Award (2011); the 2013 Keynote Speaker, 20th Annual Charles B. Huggins Research Symposium, University of Chicago; the Keynote Speaker, Advancing Precision Medicine through Complex Systems Biology (University of Michigan, 2016); and the Keynote Speaker, 2017 Regional American Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences Meeting. He also received the University of Pittsburgh Philip Troen, MD, Excellence in Medical Student Research Mentoring Award (2016).
Dr. Vodovotz’ group employs computational and systems biology approaches to inflammation in multiple disease states (sepsis/trauma, wound healing, chronic inflammatory diseases, and cancer), coupled to biochemical, cellular, animal, and clinical studies, with the goal of rational inflammation reprogramming. More specifically, his research interests, carried out in the context of an interdisciplinary research team, are the following:
- Systems biology and mathematical modeling of inflammation and wound healing in various disease states, especially infection, trauma/hemorrhage, wound healing, and liver failure, as well as the application of these computational approaches to regenerative medicine, biomarker discovery, and rational drug/device design
- Control of the inducible nitric oxide (NO) synthase (NOS2) by the cytokine transforming growth factor-b1 (TGF-b1) in numerous physiological and pathological settings
- Control of the activation of TGF-b1 by NO, other free radicals, and novel therapeutic agents for inflammatory conditions
- Modulation of inflammation in acute inflammatory states such as sepsis and hemorrhagic shock