Rashmin C. Savani, MBChB
Head of Scientific Advisory Board
Rashmin Savani is Professor, Nemours Eminent Scholar, and Chair of Pediatrics at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville. An internationally recognized expert in cell biology, his research primarily focuses on lung development, injury and repair, including mechanisms of extracellular matrix regulation of inflammation and angiogenesis.
From 2006 to 2020, Dr. Savani was Professor, William Buchanan Chair of Pediatrics, Chief of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine and Associate Director of the Center for Pulmonary & Vascular Biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. Prior to that, he served as Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania.
Across his 40-year career in clinical practice, academics and biologic research, Dr. Savani has received numerous honors including Young Investigator Awards from the Eastern Society of Pediatric Research and the American Academy of Pediatrics; the Perinatal Physician Excellence Award from the March of Dimes, and Council Membership with the International Perinatal Collegium. His extensive committee service and professional society membership includes a recent 10-year term on the Board of the International Society for Hyaluronan Science and serving on study sections for the NIH (Lung Biology and Pathology), NHLBI (Lung Injury, Repair & Regeneration) and AHA (Regional Molecular Signaling, which he also chaired). He currently sits on the National Science Committee, Innovations Fund for the March of Dimes and is a member of the Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs. A recipient of more than 25 investigational grants, Dr. Savani has made significant contributions to the scientific literature on cell biology, authoring more than 100 published articles and lecturing widely, while serving on Editorial Boards for several scientific journals as well as providing ad hoc peer review.
After obtaining his medical degree from the University of Sheffield, UK, Dr. Savani completed his residency in pediatrics at Duke University Medical Center and fellowships in Neonatology and Pulmonary Biology at Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center. He then moved to the University of Manitoba and Winnipeg Children’s Hospital where he was an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Section of Neonatology. While there, he undertook further postgraduate training in Cell & Molecular Biology at the Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology after which he opened an independent laboratory at the Institute.