The Chris (BME ’13) and Summer Gibson Endowed Chair in the Department of Biomedical Engineering — The Price College of Engineering has received a generous commitment from Chris and Summer Gibson to establish an endowed chair in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) beginning in 2028. This significant contribution will provide a distinguishing and honorary named faculty position in the Department to help retain or recruit a nationally renowned, highly accomplished and meritorious BME senior faculty. Such dedicated endowed chair support is both strategic and important for BME to strengthen and advance its visibility, rankings, and reputation in research and education by attracting and awarding the endowed chair to a highly recognized BME faculty leader. The university anticipates officially awarding this named BME faculty position in 2028, following full funding of the endowment.
Chris Gibson graduated from the University of Utah in 2013 with his PhD in Biomedical Engineering (then Bioengineering). During his graduate degree experience, Gibson joined Dean Li’s School of Medicine lab (current President of Merck Research Labs), pairing his expertise in bioengineering with the lab’s knowledge in cellular biology, molecular biology, and genetics. Chris worked on a treatment for Cerebral Cavernous Malformation (CCM), a chronic brain disease that can cause serious and, sometimes, life-threatening brain hemorrhages. Following several setbacks and repeated trials and errors, Gibson exploited bioengineering skills to apply machine learning (ML) methods to detect and describe subtle differences in the ways that CCM cells appeared under microscopic imaging. Together, Gibson and Li further progressed this idea to use computation, ML and automation technologies to reshape how they looked at drug discovery. They then created Recursion; a Salt Lake City-based biotech company that has pioneered use of AI strategies to shorten timelines for optimizing and selecting drug development pipelines.
As an alumni of Utah’s Biomedical Engineering department, Chris was featured in a personal interview in 2023 describing his time at the U and accomplishments following his training. Click here to read that interview.
Summer Gibson, MD, is currently Neuromuscular Division Chief and Associate Professor of Neurology, University of Utah Health and School of Medicine. She also has a pedigree with the University of Utah, completing her neurology residency training and fellowship in clinical neurophysiology and neuromuscular diseases here. Click here to learn more about Dr. Gibson.
The BME department is delighted and highly honored to receive the privilege of the endowment from Chris and Summer Gibson. Such generosity, vision, commitment to excellence provides a distinctive new branding to biomedical engineering in Utah and enables exciting opportunities to take the University Biomedical Engineering program to new heights and in new promising directions
