•   Dr. Rong Tian obtained her MD from West China University of Medical Sciences, and her PhD in Pharmacology from University of Aarhus in Denmark.  She completed her postdoc training at Harvard Medical School and stayed on faculty at Harvard, rising through the ranks to associate professor. In 2009, She was recruited to the University of Washington as the founding director of the interdisciplinary Mitochondria and Metabolism Center. Dr. Tian is currently Professor of Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine and Bioengineering, Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry, Pathology and Medicine.  She was elected in 2019 the Editor in Chief for Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology. 

 

•   Dr. Tian is an internationally recognized leader in cardiac metabolism and mitochondrial biology. Her laboratory has made seminal contributions to the field by combining molecular targeting strategies with vigorous in vivo metabolic phenotyping via powerful technology of multi-nuclear NMR spectroscopy, proteomics and metabolomics. Dr. Tian’s groundbreaking work on the shift of glucose and fatty acids metabolism in cardiac remodeling, provocative at the time, has invigorated the field and brought metabolism back to the center stage of the era of system biology and precision medicine. Dr. Tian is also recognized as a world leader in developing mitochondria-targeted therapy for cardiovascular diseases. Her recent work on NAD metabolism, cellular stress response and inflammation has yielded a major stimulus to the translational research as heart failure becomes a predominant diagnosis in our aging and obese population. Under her leadership, University of Washington has conducted the first in human clinical trial of targeting mitochondria NAD in heart failure.

 

•   Dr. Tian has received many honors and awards, including the Distinguished Achievement Award of the American Heart Association Basic Science Council, Research Achievement Award of the International Society for Heart Research, Bernard and Joan Marshall Distinguished Investigator of the British Society for Cardiovascular Research, and Berne Distinguished Lecturer of the American Physiological Society. She delivered the 2021 George E. Brown Memorial Lecture of the American Heart Association, the most prestigious basic science lecture of the association.