Andreadis receives Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award

The award, established in 2012, is given annually to members of the graduate faculty who have demonstrated “truly outstanding and sustained support and development of graduate students from course completion through research and subsequent career placement.”

Andreadis, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, was nominated for the award by Liesl Folks, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Andreadis will be UB’s nominee for the Geoffrey Marshall Mentoring Award sponsored by the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools (NAGS). The Marshall award will be presented at NAGS’ annual meeting in April.

In her letter nominating Andreadis for the award, Folks wrote that Andreadis is “an exemplar in the realm of graduate student mentoring.”

“The case for Stelios is compelling and is centered around his passion for training his graduate students and his deep commitment to their advancement,” she wrote. “This focus on graduate students has impacted his own many former graduate students in a significant manner, has influenced the culture of mentorship within his department, and at the same time has brought great prestige and recognition to SEAS and UB.”

Folks noted that after reading letters submitted by Andreadis’ colleagues and former graduate students in support of his nomination, “it is evident to me that Stelios trains his students effectively and broadly in all of the skills that are needed for them to succeed, as either a faculty member at a first-rate research university or as a researcher in a top-rated laboratory.

“The dedication to his graduate students’ advancement and success is far beyond the norms in the academy, and the outcomes are evident,” Folks wrote. “His students recognize that he is committed to them at a personal level, caring deeply about each one as a member of his research family. He trains them to be excellent scientists and engineers and provides them the skills needed to be impactful after they leave UB.”

A UB faculty member since 1998, Andreadis is an internationally recognized leader in the field of stem cell engineering, especially cardiovascular tissue engineering. His laboratory developed small-diameter, vascular grafts using human stem cells and biomolecule-decorated biomaterials. These tissue-engineered vessels were implanted successfully into the arterial system of a sheep model, where they remained patent, demonstrated functional remodeling and the ability to grow with the animal.

He also discovered that stem cell aging could be reversed using a single pluripotency factor, a discovery with significant implications in the field of aging and the use of stem cells in regenerative medicine.

More recently, his laboratory discovered that human epidermis is a source of neural crest stem cells, which can be coaxed to turn (or differentiate) into neurons, glial cells, melanocytes, muscle, bone and cartilage. This finding may have profound implications for the development of cell therapies for neurogenic diseases.

Andreadis has an exemplary record of continuous, peer-reviewed funding, having received more than $20 million in research support from public and private sources.

He also has received numerous accolades, including being named a fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) and the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Additionally, he also was named a recipient of a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Scholarship and Creative Activities in 2014, and received the NSF CAREER Award in 2000 and the Whitaker Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1999.