Four University of Pittsburgh professors have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for the contributions they have made toward the advancement of their respective fields. Joining the 2012 class from Pitt are Bruce Freeman, professor and chair in the School of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology; Peyman Givi, James T. MacLeod Professor of Engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering; Valerian Kagan, professor and vice chair in the Graduate School of Public Health’s (GSPH) Department of Environmental and Occupational Health; and Allan Sampson, professor of statistics in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences with a joint appointment in the GSPH Department of Biostatistics.
The four Pitt faculty honorees are among 702 Fellows selected this year, joining faculty from such other elite institutions of higher education as Harvard, Johns Hopkins
Valerian Kagan was honored for his distinguished contributions to the fields of free radical biology, medicine, and programmed cell death.
Kagan is also the director of Pitt’s Center for Free Radical and Antioxidant Health, as well a professor of pharmacology and chemical biology, radiation oncology, and chemistry at Pitt. In addition, he holds appointments as a foreign professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Taipei Medical University in Taiwan, and, in Moscow, Russian State Medical University and Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Kagan’s research is focused on molecular mechanisms of oxidative stress, antioxidants, tissue and cell acute and chronic injury, and molecular and nanotoxicology. He is one of the pioneers of a new field of research surrounding oxidative lipidomics—the study of lipids and their oxidation. He has had more than 500 peer-reviewed papers published on these subjects.
Kagan serves as an executive editor of Antioxidants and Redox Signaling and an associate editor of Chemistry and Physics of Lipids. He is a member of the editorial boards of Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, Biomembranes, and Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine.
Kagan graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University with degrees in biochemistry and biophysics. He earned a PhD in biochemistry and biophysics from Moscow State University in 1972, and, in 1981, he was awarded a Doctor of Science degree from the USSR Academy of Sciences.
12/03/2012