College of Medicine hires three professors

As UCF continues to grow and evolve, the College of Medicine is no different.

As part of the UCF Health Sciences Campus, the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences at Lake Nona hired three new professors this past fall so the school could start the new year with experts in ALS, Parkinson's disease and cancer.

The three new hires will join 12 colleagues at the College of Medicine's Burnett Biomedical Sciences building, a 198,000-square-foot research facility that is part of the emerging biomedical cluster at the Medical City at Lake Nona. By the year 2017, the College of Medicine and the life sciences cluster are expected to create 30,000 jobs and $7.8 billion in annual economic activity.

"With our new state-of-the-art research facilities and our growing academic programs, we have embarked on an aggressive process to recruit faculty members who are conducting cutting-edge research in the areas of cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic, neurodegenerative and infectious disease," said Dr. Pappachan Kolattukudy, director of the Burnett School. "These are the diseases that plague humanity."

One such new faculty member is Associate Professor Jihe Zhao, who received his Ph.D. from the Tohoku University School of Medicine in Japan and has done extensive cancer research.

"As far as the facilities go, it's world class," said Zhao of his new workplace. "It has already attracted such a huge following; there are so many opportunities here."

Having researched breast and ovarian cancer for several years, Zhao plans on teaching courses related to cancer and cell biology.

"Teaching is my favorite thing to do in my whole life," said Zhao, who first started teaching at a medical school in China. "When I start to see myself in my students, it's a really great feeling. It makes me feel young."

Associate Professor Alvaro Estévez, one of the three incoming professors, received his Ph.D. in Cellular Neurobiology from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina and has been studying reactive oxygen and nitrogen species-induced death.

"I'm studying how cells react to this damage and how the organism is trying to improve its condition,"  Estévez said. "I'm trying to find out what makes an organism's process of trying to heal itself go out of control."

Estévez hopes that by studying the chemistry of how a cell goes from survival mode to death, he will be able to help fight neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and Alzheimer's disease.

Assistant Professor Yoon-Seong Kim, who received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Science in New York City, is another incoming professor who is also researching neurodegenerative diseases and has a focus on Parkinson's disease.

These three professors are just the beginning of the Burnett School's plans for an increased number of faculty. Kolattukudy said that the Burnett School plans on adding more than 50 faculty members in the next two years. With the Molecular Biology and Microbiology program being UCF's second-most popular undergraduate major, the school currently has more than 2,400 undergraduate students and more than 130 graduate students in its M.S. and Ph.D. programs.

"Though it's still in its infancy, the school plans on becoming a global medical destination," said Wendy Sarubbi, coordinator of information and publication services at the Health Sciences Campus.

Sarubbi stated that the UCF College of Medicine has made it a goal to be the nation's premiere 21st-Century college of medicine, offering a full spectrum of education, research and patient care all at one convenient location five minutes from the local airport.

"It's an incredible opportunity to help this new baby grow," said Estévez, who will teach classes such as Microbial Biochemistry. "The possibilities are amazing and this is just the beginning."

The three professors are currently organizing their classes and getting their labs up and running for the upcoming fall 2011 semester.