Dennis E. Discher PhD

Dennis E. Discher Ph.D. The Project Director for the Center is the Robert D. Bent Professor at Penn with appointments in Engineering and Applied Science as well as in the Graduate Groups of Physics, Pharmacology, and Cell & Molecular Biology. He has had joint grants and publications with faculty in all of the participating schools, including several of the Center Investigators. He received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993, was an NSF International Postdoctoral Fellow in computational biophysics at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia, and has been on the Penn faculty since 1996.

He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering – Bioengineering Section. He has trained more than 50 Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows, with some now on faculty at Universities in the US and around the world while others have reached leadership positions in the Biotech/Pharma Industry as well as in Startups or Venture Capital.

Discher and his Lab have coauthored in excess of 200 publications that have garnered more than 30,000 citations and that range in topic from cell and nuclear mechanobiology to self-assembling polymers for cancer drug delivery, with papers appearing in Science, Cell, PNAS, Biophysical Journal, and various Nature journals. Additional Honors and Service include a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the US-National Science Foundation, the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award from the Humboldt Foundation of Germany, close to 500 invited talks on six continents, numerous NIH and NSF study sections, and review groups, and membership on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science.