Systems biology expert Juergen Hahn has been named head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

“Dr. Hahn is an accomplished researcher and outstanding academic, and we are tremendously pleased to welcome him in his new role as head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering,” said Rensselaer Provost Prabhat Hajela. “The department has undergone a rapid expansion over the past few years, and Professor Hahn has a strong, compelling vision for the BME program at Rensselaer. His leadership skills, and an unwavering passion for excellence in education and research, will be critically important as the department continues to grow its faculty and enrollment, and broadens its impact on the field.”

Highly interdisciplinary in nature, BME at Rensselaer is home to more than 360 undergraduate students and more than 50 graduate and doctoral students. Faculty researchers and students in BME work at the interface of science, engineering, health care, and medical technology. They tackle topics ranging from tissue engineering and regeneration, to next-generation X-ray and CT scanners, to wireless implantable sensors for monitoring the health of healing bones.

Prior to joining the School of Engineering at Rensselaer in 2012, Hahn served for nine years as a faculty member at Texas A&M University. Hailing from Grevenbroich in Germany, he received his diploma in engineering from RWTH Aachen University in Germany, and went on to receive his master’s and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Texas.

Hahn’s research interests include systems biology, as well as process modeling and control. His interdisciplinary work combines systems engineering, applied mathematics, and computer science to develop new ways of analyzing nonlinear systems found in biological or chemical processes. Applications of this research range from sensitivity analysis of signal transduction pathways, to image analysis techniques for fluorescence microscopy images, to experimental and sensor network design.

Hahn is the author or co-author of more than 70 journal papers and book chapters. He is widely recognized for his research and contributions to the field, and earlier this year he was named a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. In 2010, Hahn received the CAST Outstanding Young Researcher Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. In addition to winning several foundation fellowships and best paper awards, Hahn in 1995 was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship. He currently serves as an associate editor for the journals Automatica, Control Engineering Practice, and the Journal of Process Control.

Hahn succeeds Deepak Vashishth, who served as head of BME since 2009 and was recently named director of the Rensselaer Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies.