Harvey Borovetz, Ph.D.

The Department of Bioengineering in the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering has been selected as the recipient of the 2013 Chancellor’s Affirmative Action Award.

Pitt Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg presented the award to department chair Harvey Borovetz, Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering, during the University Senate Council’s June 12 meeting, held in Posvar Hall. The $2,500 prize goes annually to an “outstanding University program area or individual that has made a significant contribution in affirmative action.”

Pitt is one of only five universities nationwide to receive the Coulter Foundation Translational Bioengineering Research Award

Award’s goals are the development of health care improvements through engineering research, accelerating the introduction of new technologies into patient care

The Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh has received a $3.54 million grant from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation. Pitt is one of only five universities nationwide to receive the foundation’s Coulter Translational Partnership II Award; the five-year grant to the Swanson School’s Department of Bioengineering will fund research that employs engineering techniques to develop improvements in health care, with the ultimate goal of accelerating the introduction of new technologies into patient care.

The award from the Coulter Foundation will be supplemented by $1.5 million in matching funds from the Pitt School of Medicine, the Swanson School, and the University’s Office of Technology Management.

“We are thrilled to have been chosen to receive this award and participate in the Coulter Foundation program.  Not only will it be of tremendous benefit to the individual researchers who receive funding, but it affirms both the growing prominence and future potential of Pitt’s bioengineering program,” said Gerald D. Holder, Pitt’s U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering.

Harvey Borovetz, chair of the Department of Bioengineering, the Robert L. Hardesty Professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Surgery, and deputy director of the Artificial Organs and Medical Devices division of the Pitt-UPMC McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, will be the principal investigator and one of three co-leaders for the Coulter program at Pitt.