Cain, Feng Named SUNY Distinguished Professors

By UBNow staff

Michael E. Cain, MD, professor of medicine and biomedical engineering; and Jian Feng, PhD, UB Distinguished Professor of physiology and biophysics, were appointed to the distinguished professor ranks by the SUNY Board of Trustees at its meeting on April 29.

The rank of distinguished professor is an order above full professorship and has three co-equal designations: Distinguished Professor, Distinguished Service Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor.

Cain was named a Distinguished Service Professor in recognition of his “distinguished reputation for service not only to the campus and the University, but also to the community, the State of New York or even the nation, by sustained effort in the application of intellectual skills drawing from the candidate’s scholarly research interests to issues of public concern.”

Feng was named a Distinguished Professor in recognition of his international prominence and distinguished reputation within his chosen field.

According to SUNY, “this distinction is attained through significant contributions to the research literature or through artistic performance or achievement in the case of the arts. The candidate’s work must be of such character that the individual’s presence will tend to elevate the standards of scholarship of colleagues both within and beyond these persons’ academic fields.”

Cain is an internationally recognized cardiovascular physician-scientist who specializes in the area of abnormal heart rhythms.

He has been recognized for his long-term leadership role in his field with numerous awards, including the Distinguished Service Award from the Heart Rhythm Society, the Stanley J. Sarnoff Spirit Award from the Scientific Board of the Sarnoff Endowment for Cardiovascular Science and the Arthur E. Strauss Award from the American Heart Association.

He is also the recipient of the UB President’s Medal for exemplary leadership, and the Legacy Award from the National Federation for Just Communities of Western New York.

Cain has been involved on multiple levels in virtually every aspect of academic medicine — he served as dean of the Jacobs School for 15 years and as UB’s vice president for health sciences for a decade — and has focused his efforts on continuously enhancing the UB’s educational, research and clinical care learning environments.

In the broader community, he has been an advocate for broad health system transformation to improve health outcomes, control costs and improve health equity in Western New York.

Feng is a world leader in the molecular and cell biology of Parkinson’s disease.

His research has centered on proteins and neurotransmitters in the brain that are pathophysiological elements in Parkinson’s.

He has identified the critical roles of the parkin gene in Parkinson’s disease. Feng developed the use of human-induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to generate patient-specific human dopaminergic neurons in vitro to study the role of parkin in the disease.

He has published 89 papers — many appearing in high-impact journals and with total citations of more than 22,220 — and two book chapters.

Among his numerous honors are designation as a UB Distinguished Professor, the Visionary Inventor Award, the Bridge Award for Translational Research, UB Exceptional Scholars: Sustained Achievement Award, the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and the Stockton Kimball Award, the Jacobs School’s highest honor.

Feng’s research has been consistently funded over the past 24 years to a total of $22.3 million. An excellent mentor, he has guided numerous PhD and postdoctoral students throughout their academic journeys.