Thomas M. Saba, Ph.D., has been named associate vice president for health sciences research and graduate education at West Virginia University.
“Dr. Saba is the right person to lead our ambitious research agenda,”said Robert M. D’Alessandri, M.D., WVU ’s vice president for health sciences and dean of medicine.”We are on the brink of an enormous increase in research activity, and need a scientist who understands the resources required for this type of enterprise and can help us develop strategies to support a higher level of health research.”
Saba arrived at WVU in May, and is forming a scientific advisory board to assist in developing a strategic plan for research and graduate education at the health sciences center.”We need to assure that our graduate education as well as our research programs grow in parallel, and that we develop the infrastructure needed to compete for significant external funding, especially NIH grants. This will require strategic recruitment of faculty and an emphasis on interdisciplinary and collaborative initiatives.”
His administrative post was created to coordinate the growing research agendas of the schools of medicine, dentistry, nursing and pharmacy at WVU ’s Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center. He will also serve as associate dean for research and graduate studies in the School of Medicine.
Saba was professor and chair of physiology and cell biology at Albany Medical College in New York and recently led that institution through a five-year strategic research plan as its senior vice president for research. In addition to his own research laboratory which has been continuously funded by NIH for 34 years, he directed a National Institutes of Health interdisciplinary predoctoral Ph.D. cardiovascular disease training grant, involving three New York universities, from 1976 until joining WVU . It recently received an additional 5-year award based on his renewal application. He also directed two NIH postdoctoral training grants which have trained both M.D. and Ph.D. fellows for academic research careers.
“Interdisciplinary research programs are crucial to taking research out of the laboratory and making an impact on peoples’lives,”D’Alessandri said.”In New York, Dr. Saba worked with surgeons, engineers and others to develop new knowledge that was vital to helping patients, and he encouraged other scientists to do so as well. He’s also experienced in leading multi-institutional efforts so that research is not bound by the limits of one campus or one university.”
Saba is a graduate of Wilkes College (now Wilkes University) in Pennsylvania and holds a Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics from the University of Tennessee Medical Center. He was on the faculty at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago prior to joining the faculty at Albany Medical College of Union University in 1973, where he served as Wiggers chair of the department of physiology and cell biology for more than 25 years with a parallel appointment as professor of biomedical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
He is the author of hundreds of scientific articles, abstracts and research reviews in cardiopulmonary physiology as well as cell and molecular biology; has served as mentor to 40 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and has been appointed to numerous federal and non-federal scientific grant review panels.