Mary-Ann Mycek, Ph.D., named William And Valerie Hall Department Chair of Biomedical Engineering

The Board of Regents approved the appointment of Mary-Ann Mycek, Ph.D., as the William and Valerie Hall Department Chair

of Biomedical Engineering (BME) in the College of Engineering (CoE) and Medical School, effective  September 1, 2023.

Dr. Mycek has served as interim chair of BME, a joint department in CoE and the Medical School, since July 2021. During that time, she has been responsible for the education and welfare of more than 650 BME undergraduate and graduate students, while 13 new faculty joined the department.

She also served as the principal investigator for the Coulter Translational Research Partnership Program in BME — a $20M endowed program with a goal of creating a powerhouse of innovation.

As interim chair, she supported the development and implementation of several academic initiatives, including launching the first Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) degree program, initiating the ongoing BME Exchange networking program for students, alumni, and industry partners, and developing and launching BME Summer Workshops @ Michigan — an annual series on focused translational research topics for global participants.

She joined the University of Michigan faculty in 2003 as an associate professor and was awarded tenure in 2006. She was promoted to professor in 2012. During her time as a faculty member, she received the Award for Outstanding Accomplishment from the BME Department and was elected by her faculty peers to the executive board of the Rackham Graduate School.

In 2014, she was elected to membership in the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, a group of bioengineers representing the top 2% of the medical and biological engineering community in academia, industry and government. She was named a fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics in 2017.

In 2016, Dr. Mycek was appointed associate dean for graduate education in CoE, where she created and implemented strategic initiatives and assessment plans related to CoE graduate, online, and professional education.

In 2018, her responsibilities expanded to include online and professional engineering education and she was appointed associate dean for graduate and professional education. She established the NextProf Nexus partnership with the University of California, Berkeley and Georgia Tech. The next year, she launched Nexus, the CoE’s home for online and professional engineering education. Established just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Nexus provided the CoE both strategic and operational advantages during the remote-learning transition.