Texas A&M Appoints Intercollegiate School Of Engineering Medicine Dean
Texas A&M University today announced the appointment of Roderic I. Pettigrew, Ph.D., M.D. as the inaugural dean of the Intercollegiate School of Engineering Medicine.
The new school expands efforts at Texas A&M University to train a new type of physician engineer, the “physicianeer,” who will be both a practicing physician and a trained engineer. The intercollegiate school is expected to be the largest engineering-based medical degree program in the nation and the only program that allows graduates to receive both a doctorate of medicine and master’s in engineering in four years, said Interim Provost and Executive Vice President Timothy P. Scott in an announcement to campus today.
Pettigrew is a recipient of the 2020 Vannevar Bush Award bestowed by the U.S. President’s National Science Board, which “honors truly exceptional lifelong leaders in science and technology who have made substantial contributions to the welfare of the nation;” the 2019 National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) Arthur M. Bueche Award for national and international leadership in science and technology and determining U.S. policy; and the inaugural Gold Medal of the Academy of Radiology Research. He is the Robert A. Welch Professor in the Texas A&M University College of Medicine and professor of biomedical engineering in the College of Engineering. Pettigrew is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and is a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences, India.
He previously served as CEO for engineering health for Texas A&M’s Health Science Center and College of Engineering and as executive dean for the Engineering Medicine (EnMed) collaboration between Texas A&M and Houston Methodist Hospital. He holds an adjunct professorship of nanomedicine at the Houston Methodist Academic Institute and was founding director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 2002-17. He also served as acting chief officer for scientific workforce diversity for the National Institutes of Health from 2012-14.
Pettigrew earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Morehouse College and a master’s degree in nuclear science and engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He earned a Ph.D. in applied radiation physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.D. from the University of Miami Medical School.
