Stephen Boppart named Director of the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute

Stephen Boppart, the W. W. Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering, professor, and a noted inventor and entrepreneur, has been named director of the Interdisciplinary Health Science Institute (IHSI) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Boppart has served as interim IHSI director since 2022.

“Steve is a big-picture thinker who has worked methodically to sharpen IHSI’s focus – and that means real impact for Illinois health researchers,” said Susan Martinis, Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Illinois. 

Boppart, who has been at Illinois since 2000, works at the intersection of engineering, medicine, and biology to develop novel optical biomedical imaging technologies and translate these for clinical applications and biological discovery. He holds appointments in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Bioengineering, as well as the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

Boppart leads the newly awarded ARPA-H-funded MarginDx project, as well as the national NIH-funded Center for Label-free Imaging and Multi-scale Biophotonics, and the industry-funded GSK Center for Optical Molecular Imaging. In his role with IHSI, he is also the Illinois Chair of the Mayo Clinic & Illinois Alliance for Technology-based Healthcare. Throughout his career he has been a strong advocate for the integration of engineering and medicine to advance human health and our healthcare systems, and has been involved in visioning, establishing, and developing the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. He has co-founded four startup companies, has over 50 patents related to optical biomedical imaging technology, and was elected to the National Academy of Inventors in 2019.

“Steve’s extensive experience collaborating across disciplines, fostering connections between academic, industry, entrepreneurial, and clinical partners, and advancing translational research are the perfect recipe for IHSI leadership,” said Martinis.

“I am thrilled and honored to officially be named as director of IHSI. As a cross-campus interdisciplinary research institute focused on health science, technology, and innovation, IHSI is charged with its mission to be the campus catalyst to tackle the grand challenges that we face around personal, public, and planetary health,” said Boppart. “By coalescing campus faculty and researchers with academic, clinical, industry, and community partners around these problems, we can apply Illinois’ interdisciplinary approaches and expertise to develop unique solutions.”

Boppart succeeds Founding IHSI Director Neal Cohen, who set the original course for IHSI to celebrate its 10th anniversary this year. IHSI emerged in 2014 as a campus strategic initiative to better coordinate research and outreach efforts in health, and became an institute 2017. IHSI leads efforts at Illinois to address society’s greatest health challenges through interdisciplinary collaboration, translational partnerships, and innovation.

“Tackling grand challenges, whether it be during the COVID pandemic, or now the positive margin rates following cancer surgeries, or even the current need to equip future researchers and faculty with skill sets to take on such big problems, IHSI and our dedicated staff serve an essential role at Illinois by making no impact on health seem impossible,” said Boppart.

Over the past 10 years, IHSI has successfully led collaborations such as the Mayo Clinic & Illinois Alliance for Technology-Based Healthcare and the Carle-Illinois research partnership, and has built infrastructure that is integral to conducting health research, including a biostatistics core, now known as BERD, and Illinois REDCap, offering a flexible data management platform within a HIPAA-capable environment. IHSI was charged by the OVCRI to coordinate the campus response to the new ARPA-H federal agency, which has led to not only multiple ARPA-H awards, but also to Illinois being competitively named as an institutional spoke-partner in the national ARPA-H Investor Catalyst and Customer Experience hubs, connecting Illinois to the larger national network of collaborators and institutions. IHSI also offers training and research development programs for health researchers, including the NIH Grant Writing Series, Community-Academic Scholars program, and Emerging Research Leaders Academy.