Tariq Rana, Ph.D. Appointed Chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine

Rana earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the UC Davis and was an American Cancer Society fellow in the Laboratory of Chemical Biodynamics and Department of Chemistry at the UC Berkeley. He previously held a professorship in biochemistry and molecular pharmacology and served as a founding director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute funded Chemical Biology Initiative at UMass Chan Medical School. Dr. Rana joined the UC San Diego faculty at UC San Diego in 2009 and has held several leadership positions through the years including Vice Chair for Innovation and Therapeutics for the Department of Pediatrics and executive committee member of the Cancer Therapeutic Training Program at Moores Cancer Center.

“As department chair, I look forward to working with our outstanding faculty, trainees and staff to create a culture based on common mission and values that we will uphold and champion together,” said Rana, “We will embark on advancing the existing areas of excellence in the department and generate new opportunities for multidisciplinary research breakthroughs with collaborations within the School of Medicine and across campus, and with other research institutions on the Mesa and partnerships with industry.”

Rana is a multidisciplinary scientist whose research explores the fundamental mechanisms of RNA biology and chemistry to uncover disease pathogenesis and translate new discoveries into innovative therapies. His work over the past two decades has made groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of RNAi, basic structural and functional features of RNA and microRNAs, and catalytic functions of ribonucleoprotein complexes required for gene silencing in human cells. He also illuminated the mechanisms of RNAs in stem cell biology and in immunobiological regulation of host-viral interactions and cancer therapy outcomes.  His research team works closely with Moores Cancer Center, the Center for Drug Discovery, Sanford Burnham Prebys and the Biomedical Sciences Ph.D. Program in the School of Medicine.

Rana has mentored more than 200 trainees in his lab, including graduate students, undergraduates, postdoctoral fellows and staff scientists. He has served as a member of several scientific advisory boards and participated on many institutional, national, and international committees, and has received multiple teaching and research awards. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Inventors.

Cellular and Molecular Medicine

The Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine is one of two basic science departments at the School of Medicine. The department is home to nearly 40 faculty and 350 postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and research staff who work collaboratively across the disciplines of biochemistry, genetics, genomics, systems biology and stem cell biology to understand the fundamentals of cellular processes and their relationship to human disease. 

“Groundbreaking technologies such as genomics and epigenomics, the generation and differentiation of stem cells, designing new materials and 3D printing, genome editing, delivery of small and large molecules, high resolution structure determination and imaging, combined with AI have provided opportunities to develop new therapies at an unprecedented speed,” Rana explained.  “This is an exciting time for us to integrate fundamental knowledge of cellular and molecular biology with new technologies to achieve significant breakthroughs in our understanding of human health and disease.”