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It gives me great pleasure to announce that Dr. Josh Hutcheson, Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering has been awarded this year’s “’Stop Heart Disease’ Researcher of the Year Award” by the <a href="https://www.floridaheart.org/">Florida Heart Research Foundation</a>. The award was presented at the President’s Celebration dinner during the American College of Cardiology, Florida Chapter annual meeting on August 18, 2019.

Hutcheson joined us from Harvard in August 2016 (He has a Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. from Vanderbilt). Josh is also a member of the Biomolecular Science Institute.

Funding from the Coulter Foundation support to Biomedical Engineering allowed us to offer Josh research space and personnel support to kick-start a very promising research program that “focuses on the mechanisms through which tissues are built and maintained and the pathological changes that lead to disease”, at his Cardiovascular Matrix Remodeling Lab (<a href="https://hutchesonlab.fiu.edu/">CMRL</a>). Within a year after joining us, he had received external grant funding from the American Heart Association.

Josh was the brain-child behind the <a href="https://bme.fiu.edu/2018/02/heart-day/">Miami Heart Month</a> that the department hosted in February 2018, with participation from the Miami Heart Institute and several national and local Heart specialists. We will make this an annual event.

Hutcheson, along with colleague Zachary Danziger, assistant professor, also launched <a href="https://anil.fiu.edu/thirstforscience/">Thirst for Science</a>, our department’s newest community outreach program where science professionals drink/chat with science enthusiasts.

Josh has also taken charge of the Coulter Undergraduate Research Excellence (<a href="https://bme.fiu.edu/academics/degrees/undergraduate/bs-biomedical-engineering/coulter-undergraduate-research-excellence-program-cure/">CURE</a>) program in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

We are very proud of Josh – a great colleague – a budding researcher – and an excellent teacher.

Congratulations Josh!

Click <a href="https://www.floridaheart.org/researcher-of-the-year/">here</a> to read the official announcement.

<em>by Ranu Jung, Ph.D.</em>

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