College of Engineering Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen has announced the appointment of Associate Professor John White as chairman ad interim of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, effective Sept. 1.

White, who also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at the Medical School, has served as BME’s associate chair for undergraduate and graduate studies. He joined the faculty in 1994 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2000.

His appointment as chair ad interim comes a few weeks after Lutchen left the BME chairman’s office to assume deanship of the College of Engineering. Lutchen’s eight-year tenure as BME chairman was marked by a dramatic rise in the department’s national profile, with the department currently ranked 7^th in the nation by US News & World Report. Lutchen said the great majority of BME faculty recommended White to be his immediate successor.

“John has been an extraordinarily productive scientist, educator, administrator and leader for BME,” Lutchen said. “He has the enthusiastic support of the BME faculty and has worked tirelessly for enhancing a cross-disciplinary, student-centric approach to both undergraduate and graduate education in Biomedical Engineering. He is very well known in the BME research and professional communities. John’s background, approach and leadership style make him a perfect choice to sustain the department’s stature and address future initiatives.”

Lutchen said that continuity necessitated the appointment of an interim chair quickly. He added that he will work with BME faculty in the coming months to determine the best approach for identifying a permanent chair.

“I'm honored that the BME faculty, Dean Kenneth Lutchen, and the administration have sufficient confidence in me to grant me the position of chair ad interim,” said White. “Ken, the faculty, the students and the staff have worked tirelessly for decades to produce a world-class department with a wonderful sense of camaraderie. I hope to build upon our momentum as a department that others look to for leadership in both research and education."

White’s research into the function of mammalian brains has yielded millions of dollars in support from National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Whitaker Foundation and other sources, and has produced dozens of publications. White is the associate director of the Center for Memory and Brain at BU.

As a teacher, White has placed equal emphasis on directing graduate students while also teaching undergraduates and making them part of his laboratory research. He annually mentors undergraduates working on senior projects. His contributions to the College were recognized in 2002 with the Faculty Service Award.

White is a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, and a full-time member of the NIH Study Section on Learning and Memory. He is co-director of the Methods in Computational Neuroscience course at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.

White holds a doctorate in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University. His bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering is from Louisiana Tech University.