BU Bestows Top Honor on Grinstaff
BU President Robert Brown has announced the appointment of College of Engineering Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry, MSE, MED), along with Gary Lawson of the School of Law and Dana Robert of the School of Theology, as William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professors—the highest recognition the University bestows on faculty.
The funds that come with the professorship “will allow me to do more of what I’m doing and to take greater risks in the research,” Grinstaff told BU Today. “To work on projects that are more challenging, more interdisciplinary. It kind of reinforces the way I think about research and the way I work with my students.”
Besides being a professor of translational research, biomedical engineering, chemistry, materials science and engineering, and medicine, Grinstaff is director of the NIH T32 Program in Biomaterials and director of the Nanotechnology Innovation Center at Boston University.
Grinstaff’s research activities encompass the synthesis of new macromolecules and biomaterials, self-assembly chemistry, imaging contrast agents, drug delivery, and wound repair. His eponymous research group conducts interdisciplinary research in the areas of biological and macromolecular chemistry.
Early in the pandemic, Grinstaff developed a diagnostic device for the detection of COVID-19. The start-up he founded to produce the device was recently acquired by Sorrento Therapeutics.
Grinstaff is a fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), the winner of the 2018 Clemson Award for Applied Research from the Society of Biomaterials, and recipient of the 2015 Charles DeLisi Award, among other honors. He is the author or coauthor on more than 225 peer-reviewed manuscripts. He earned his BA at Occidental College and his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Read the full story on all three new Warren Distinguished Professors on BU Today.