Shawn Gomez, a professor in the Lampe Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, will succeed Peter Tong Chair Paul Campagnola, as chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He will begin in his new role on Aug. 1.
Gomez is a proven leader; dedicated mentor and educator; and a distinguished, collaborative researcher. For the past two decades, he has built transformative biomedical engineering programs that bridge academic excellence with real-world impact. He has a strong interest in amplifying the impact of basic biomedical engineering research. In his lab, he encourages team science. His research—in computational systems biology and medicine and translational AI—emphasizes innovative, interdisciplinary high-impact science with real applications in areas such as cancer therapeutics and surgical AI tools.
Beyond his home department, Gomez also is a professor of pharmacology, a faculty member in the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program, the Computational Medicine Program, and the Comparative Medicine Institute at the NC State veterinary school, among others. He is founder and co-executive director of FastTraCS, an internal medtech incubator through the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute that has supported more than 30 projects and yielded four startup companies. He also holds service roles at all levels and has earned numerous honors for his research and leadership.
Gomez earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering sciences from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his doctor of engineering science in biomedical engineering from Columbia University. He was a Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene postdoctoral fellow at Columbia and a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.
Grainger Dean of the College of Engineering Devesh Ranjan calls Gomez an aspirational, collaborative leader who creates environments in which people and ideas thrive. “His vision for biomedical engineering unites mentorship, team science, discovery, translation and impact—enabling BME to build on its strengths, pursue its bold ambitions, and make advances that genuinely improve lives and the communities we serve,” says Ranjan. “I’m excited for the perspective and momentum he will contribute as chair.”