1. Denis Wirtz is the vice provost for research and Theophilus Halley Smoot Professor of Engineering Science at Johns Hopkins University.
22 Facts About Denis Wirtz
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Denis Wirtz is an expert in the molecular and biophysical mechanisms of cell motility and adhesion and nuclear dynamics in health and disease.
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Denis Wirtz pioneered the technique of particle-tracking microrheology to probe the rheological properties of complex fluids and living cells and tissues.
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Denis Wirtz was born in the Ixelles municipality of Brussels, Belgium.
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Denis Wirtz is fluent in English and French, and became a US citizen in 2007.
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Denis Wirtz earned a physics engineering degree at the Ecole Polytechnique of the Universite libre de Bruxelles in 1988.
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Denis Wirtz was then granted a fellowship through the European Union's Human Capital and Mobility program to conduct postdoctoral research at the Ecole Superieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles in Paris, France.
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Johns Hopkins 8.
Denis Wirtz joined the faculty of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in 1994 and was promoted to the rank of full professor in 2003.
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In February 2014, Denis Wirtz was named the vice provost for research at Johns Hopkins.
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Denis Wirtz has expanded the university's research development efforts, creating a weekly digest of limited submission opportunities, a list of more than 175 funding opportunities for postdoctoral researchers, a list of more than 330 funding opportunities for early career faculty, and consolidated monthly digests of internal funding opportunities at the institution.
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Denis Wirtz consolidated multiple research administration offices into a central research administration team, Johns Hopkins University Research Administration.
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Denis Wirtz directs the Johns Hopkins Physical Sciences-Oncology Center, which is part of a network of twelve centers in the United States funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute to link the physical sciences with the study of cancer.
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The PSOC is part of the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology, which Denis Wirtz co-founded and acts as associate director.
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INBT counts Becton Dickinson, MedImmune, Northrop Grumman, Secant Medical, and Under Armour among its corporate partners, and Denis Wirtz has previously served as a Nikon Partner in Science since 2008.
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Denis Wirtz is the PI of a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates site in the Nanotechnology for Biology and Bioengineering program.
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Denis Wirtz is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biophysical Society, American Society for Microbiology, American Society for Cell Biology, American Society for Microbiology, and Society of Rheology.
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In collaboration with Benjamin Shapiro, Elisabeth Smela and Pamela Abshire, Denis Wirtz was awarded the 2004 Physical Science Invention of the Year Award by the University of Maryland Office of Technology Commercialization.
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Denis Wirtz formerly served on the editorial boards of Physical Biology, Journal of the Royal Society Interface Focus, Biophysical Journal, Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine, as an ad hoc editor for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, as the guest editor of a Special Issue of Physical Biology on physical oncology, and as the editor of the Cell Biophysics section of Comprehensive Biophysics.
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Denis Wirtz has made important contributions to molecular and biophysical mechanisms of cell motility and adhesion and nuclear dynamics in health and disease, and he pioneered the method of particle-tracking microrheology to probe the rheological properties of complex fluids and living cells and tissues.
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Denis Wirtz's lab identified fundamental differences between conventional 2D migration and more physiologically relevant 3D migration in cancer cells, creating new understanding of the tumor microenvironment and metastasis.
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Denis Wirtz developed novel tools and concepts to study the role of nucleus and nuclear connections to the cytoskeleton and key cell functions, including 2D and 3D cell migration and adhesion, mechanosensation, and mechanotransduction.
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Denis Wirtz has published nearly 200 peer-reviewed articles published in Science, Nature, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Methods, Nature Reviews Cancer, Nature Materials, Nature Protocols, PNAS, Nature Communications, and Journal of Cell Biology.