Jacobs School Bolstering Faculty at Historic Rate

By Dirk Hoffman

UB’s initiative, “Advancing Top 25: Faculty Hiring,” was announced in January 2023 and is considered transformative for the university.

At the Jacobs School, that has resulted in an unprecedented number of new hires of prominent researchers and clinicians.

“Recruiting rising stars and established scholars to expand our faculty base is a major milestone in our Top 25 Ambition,” says Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, UB’s vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School.

“Their expertise and dedication will amplify our already impactful basic science and clinical research, enhance the educational experiences of our students, and improve health outcomes in our community and around the world,” she adds.

Of the 101 new faculty members hired at the Jacobs School thus far this year, 18 are tenure track faculty — 12 males and six females. Four of the new tenure-track hires are categorized as underrepresented in medicine.

The breakdown between basic departments is 18 in basic science departments and 83 in clinical departments. The greatest number of hires are in the departments of Pediatrics (23) Medicine (18) and Emergency Medicine (11).

Several of UB’s recent hires were made possible by an historic investment from New York State.

The investment is focused on increasing the number of tenured/tenure track faculty, and is primarily focused on increasing federally funded research, improving health equity and outcomes, advancing technological innovation, enhancing economic impact and improving the human condition broadly.

“The Jacobs School’s New York State faculty hires are highly-funded faculty bringing National Institutes of Health funding or other federal research funding with them to UB,” says Kristina M. Costanzo-Metcalfe, MEd, assistant dean and senior director of finance and administration at the Jacobs School. 

Since the initiative was announced, the school has recruited several NYS faculty hires who collectively bring over $14 million in total research funding to UB.

New faculty members say they were attracted to UB and the Jacobs School for several reasons: the Top 25 Ambition; the commitment to academic freedom and diversity; the culture of collaborative, cross-disciplinary research; and the university’s deep engagement in the Buffalo region. 

Among them are Rebekah M. Charney, PhD, an assistant professor of biochemistry, whose research efforts focus on understanding the causes of birth defects, especially associated with a population of cells in the embryo called the neural crest.

“The abnormal development of neural crest cells is associated with many pathologies including craniofacial malformations like cleft lip and cleft palate, rare syndromes and aggressive cancer,” Charney says.

In Charney’s lab, researchers are using human pluripotent stem cells to better understand ‘neurocristopathies’ such as Mowat-Wilson syndrome, which causes anomalies in the face, heart, and gut, as well as intellectual disability.

Charney says researchers can induce the formation of pluripotent stem cells from skin samples provided by patients with birth defects and examine how mutations in certain genes affect developmental processes.

“The Jacobs School, and UB in general, is an extremely collaborative and innovative research environment with significant expertise in areas affiliated with my research, including neuroscience, stem cells, cancer biology, and genomics and bioinformatics.”

“Additionally, I am particularly excited to collaborate with colleagues working with patients at the Oishei Children’s Hospital next door, as well as those in UB’s School of Dental Medicine,” she says.

Charney, who came to UB from the University of California, Riverside, has found Buffalo to be “an extremely friendly community with a lot to explore.”

“I am really excited to be joining UB during this remarkable period of growth. I am really impressed with the Advancing Top 25 initiative and the large number of extremely talented new faculty,” she says. “I look forward to contributing my expertise to UB’s growing impact on pediatric health, stem cells and developmental biology.”

Another new faculty member is Sergio Dominguez-Lopez, PhD, assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology, who is a neuroscientist whose current research focuses on understanding how the chronic use of substances with abuse liability, such as methamphetamine, modifies the brain.

“For this, I am training mice to self-administer intravenous infusions of methamphetamine. We let these animals self-administer the drug for several weeks to months, and then we study how chronic exposure to methamphetamine impacts the otherwise normal brain physiology,” he says.

“I am particularly interested in changes in the anatomy of neuronal circuits, neuronal activity, and the genetics of brain cells that can help us understand substance use disorders.”

Dominguez-Lopez came to UB from the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“I have worked in several institutions in North America, including Mexico, Canada and the U.S. The University at Buffalo is a world-class academic and research environment.”

“In particular, the Jacobs School, where my laboratory is located, has state-of-the-art installations, including laboratories, core, and supporting facilities that expedite the execution of research projects,” Dominguez-Lopez says.

“The academic and scientific environment at the University at Buffalo is very attractive to new investigators who want to thrive in a growing institution with a clear vision of becoming a leader in biomedical research,” he adds.

Dominguez-Lopez says he appreciates that “collaboration between research groups is facilitated and encouraged across the different campuses of UB” and that “we have the support of specialized administrative staff that help us work on grant applications to fund our research projects.”

“UB commits to actively supporting diversity in its workforce. This is exemplified by UB’s efforts to recruit new faculty from diverse backgrounds, like me. Working in an academic atmosphere like UB is very motivating and inspiring.”

The Jacobs School hiring efforts are ongoing. To see a listing of job postings, go to the university’s human resources portal here.