Prof. Melody Swartz has been appointed deputy dean for faculty affairs at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME), effective March 21.
In this role, Swartz, the William B. Ogden Professor of Molecular Engineering, will chair the PME faculty search committee and be responsible for faculty appointments, mentoring, tenure and promotions, as well as facilitate faculty award nominations.
“Melody brings a standard of excellence and deep knowledge of Pritzker Molecular Engineering’s mission and values to the position,” said Matthew Tirrell, dean of PME. “She will do an outstanding job administering faculty affairs at PME, and I am very grateful to her for taking on this responsibility.”
Swartz joined PME in 2014 and holds a joint appointment in the Ben May Department for Cancer Research. Previously, she was an assistant professor at Northwestern University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering before moving to the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, where she was promoted to full professor and eventually served as director of the Institute of Bioengineering.
Swartz’s research focuses on understanding and exploiting the roles of lymphatic function as it relates to cancer and chronic inflammatory diseases such as asthma, using a variety of interdisciplinary approaches from bioengineering, immunobiology, physiology, cell biology, and biomechanics. Her lab works in both basic hypothesis-driven research as well as in translational applications.
Among her many honors, Swartz was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.
Swartz replaces James Skinner, who retired on March 20.