May 2024
Dr. James Ankrum, FOEDRC faculty member, was recently selected as a recipient of the Iowa Mid-Career Faculty Scholar Award for 2024. This Award provides funding and development opportunities for outstanding tenured associate professors who have established national or international reputations in their disciplines and are exceptional teachers in and out of the classroom.
Dr. Ankrum is a distinguished researcher who has made significant contributions to the field of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. His team engineers therapeutics based in mesenchymal stem cells—cells that can self-renew—to combat inflammation and heal wound an ischemia damaged tissues. He has also developed in vitro models of fat tissue to study how environmental toxins in the body contribute to diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Dr. Ankrum has published 46 peer-reviewed journal papers since coming to Iowa. He is also an academic editor for Stem Cell Research and Therapy, is on the advisory board of Diabetes Action Research and Education Foundation, and was recently named a Fulbright Scholar, a prestigious and competitive fellowship that helps in supporting research opportunities and establishing long-term relationships between people and nations.
Dr. Ankrum has been instrumental in enhancing courses in the Roy J. Carver Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering, including revamping the department’s second-year professional seminar course and the two-course senior design sequence, as well as developing a new course, Communicating Science. The course, ideal for engineers who want to communicate with nonexpert audiences, has been a particular success, with graduate students from outside the biomedical engineering program registering for it.
“Dr. Ankrum is an extremely productive scientist and a blossoming world-class scholar,” says Kim Blackwell, chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “Simultaneously, he excels in the classroom, is an outstanding mentor, and is generous in service.”
Dr. Ankrum received a Bachelor of Science in biomedical engineering from Iowa, a Master of Philosophy in engineering design from Cambridge University, and a PhD in medical engineering and medical physics from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He joined the faculty at Iowa as an assistant professor in 2014.