Karin Przyklenk, PhD has been named Director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute for the School of Medicine, and she will start the position on February 1, 2008. Her acceptance of this leadership position follows a comprehensive 18-month search process that considered eleven candidates with national and international reputations of excellence. She comes to the School of Medicine from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where she served as a professor of Emergency Medicine and Anesthesiology, as well as member of the Center for Platelet Function Studies.
Dr. Przyklenk obtained her PhD in Biophysics from the University of Western Ontario, pursued post-doctoral training at Harvard, and held her first junior faculty appointment at Wayne State University. After serving for 14 years as the Assistant Director of the Heart Institute, Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles and holding a faculty position at the University of Southern California, she was recruited to the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 2002.
Dr. Przyklenk's research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), by foundations and by industry. She has authored more than 170 peer-reviewed papers, invited reviews, editorials and book chapters the field of myocardial ischemia and infarction, is on the editorial board of multiple journals, and been a grant reviewer for the NIH, the American Heart Association, as well as the Biomedical Research Council of Singapore and the Welcome Trust.
She has achieved national and international recognition for her translational, bench-to-bedside research focusing on the pathophysiology of acute coronary ischemic syndromes, the identification of cellular mechanisms and signaling pathways that increase the tolerance of the myocardium to ischemia, and the development of novel strategies to limit damage caused to the heart by ischemia-reperfusion.
"The appointment of Dr. Przyklenk as director is an important milestone in the School of Medicine's "Vision 2011" and in Wayne State University's plan to achieve a Clinical Translational Science Award," said Wayne State University School of Medicine Dean, Robert M.Mentzer, Jr. MD. "She is a distinguished translational scientist of international renown. She is extremely well-qualified to partner with cardiovascular physicians, to recruit outstanding researchers, and to coordinate and foster interdisciplinary and collaborative research in cardiovascular disease that crosses departments, centers, institutes, colleges; and also incorporates the intellectual and patient resources of our hospital partners in Detroit and its surrounding communities."