Profile

Dr. Tresco joined the faculty at the University of Utah in 1992. He currently holds the position of Professor, and recently held the position as Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering where he served for 7 years. Before becoming Department Chair, Dr. Tresco served as the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering for 4 years and prior to that as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for 3 years.  He is the founding director of the W. M. Keck Center for Tissue Engineering, where he served as director from 1998-2012.  His lab seeks to develop biologically informed approaches to reduce neuroinflammation and the foreign body response surrounding devices chronically implanted in the CNS.  Dr. Tresco’s academic contributions include graduating 25 PhD, 12 MS students, and supervised 42 undergraduate research projects.  He has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal publications generating over 13567 citations with an h-index of 56, published 238 peer-reviewed conference proceedings and given over 100 invited talks. He presently holds 20 issued and pending patents relating areas of biotechnology, and has contributed to the founding of several biotech companies including Acorda Therapeutics Inc., Hawthorne, NY, and Cytotherapeutics, Inc., Providence RI.  In addition, he has served as a scientific advisor to such companies as Bard Access Systems, Fresenius, Microislet, Cytotherapeutics, Medtronic, and Smith Kline Beecham. Dr. Tresco is a member of Tau Beta Pi, the top US Engineering Honor Society, and is a Fellow in the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.