Center for Biomedical Research gets new director

Professor of Physics Bradley Roth has been named the new director of OU’s Center for Biomedical Research.

By Amanda Benjamin, student writer

Professor of Physics Bradley Roth has been named the new director of OU’s Center for Biomedical Research (CBR). He succeeds previous director Denis Callewaert, who stepped down three years ago.

“One of my goals is to restore the program and get it back to where it was,” Roth said.

CBR’s core mission is to promote and support biomedical research and education at OU and allied institutions. Its goals are to recruit and retain outstanding biomedical scientists, facilitate collaborative biomedical research projects and develop support for biomedical research programs, graduate and undergraduate training, core facilities and equipment.

“We’re trying to encourage people to obtain external funding. That is one of our main goals,” Roth explained. Toward that end, CBR is implementing a grant proposal pre-review program to improve the quality of grant applications.

At the same time, CBR supports graduate student fellowship and is looking to popularize the program, Roth said. An increase in biomedical research will open up more research opportunities for students.

Roth has experience with both research work and obtaining external funding. He received his doctoral degree in physics from Vanderbilt University and is widely published, highly cited and recognized for his work in researching bioelectrical and biomagnetic phenomena.

Roth was a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) before becoming a professor at OU. With a 10-year history at the university, he is familiar with the staff and the research work that has been done here.

Roth also has mentored many graduate and undergraduate research students. Having spent six years as president of OU’s Chapter of Sigma Xi, the national research society, he learned of the breadth of research opportunities on campus.

Outside the university community, Roth was recently elected as a fellow in the American Physics Society and is on the editorial boards of The Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology and Heart Rhythm.