Physics Professor Wolfgang Losert Named MPower Professor
The University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State (MPower) appointed six professors—three from the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and three from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP)—as MPower Professors. The MPower Professorship recognizes, incentivizes and fosters collaborations between faculty who are working together on the most pressing issues of our time.
To be considered for the MPower Professorship, faculty must demonstrate collaboration on strategic research that would be unattainable or difficult to achieve by UMB or UMCP acting independently of one another and must embrace the mission of MPower: to collaboratively strengthen and serve the state of Maryland and its citizens.
MPower Professors will each receive $150,000, allocated over three years, to apply to their salary or to support supplemental research activities. These funds recognize, enable and support strong collaborations between faculty in the joint research enterprise between UMCP and UMB.
“Each of the six MPower Professors selected this year exemplifies a dedication to collaboration, innovation, and discovery,” said UMB President Bruce E. Jarrell. “They positively impact the lives of citizens in Maryland, across the country and around the world through their work to solve major challenges facing society.”
"Reaching across disciplines to tackle complex problems takes tireless commitment, dedication, and innovation. I’m so thankful to these six professors for demonstrating that we are stronger when we work together, and that addressing the grand challenges of our time requires thinking outside the box,” said UMCP President Darryll J. Pines.
The 2023 MPower Professors are developing advanced understanding of ways to improve programs and policies to support early parenting and child development; discovering emergent dynamic properties of complex systems at the interface of physics and biology; investigating interventions to improve substance use and other health outcomes locally and globally; maximizing the bioavailability of oral medications; researching ways to reduce aging-associated ailments such as cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes; and connecting engineering and clinical care to develop cutting-edge diagnostic and therapeutic methods for blinding and neurodegenerative diseases.
The 2023 MPower Professors include Wolfgang Losert, a professor in the Department of Physics in UMCP’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. He is a member of the school’s Institute for Physical Science and Technology, holds an affiliate appointment in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering, and has an adjunct appointment with the University of Maryland Medical System’s Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center. He also is co-director of the National Cancer Institute University of Maryland Partnership for Integrative Cancer Research. Losert’s research—supported by $2 million-plus a year in funding for the past seven years — is at the convergence of physics, biology, and artificial intelligence and focuses on the nonlinear dynamics of living systems. Losert earned his Ph.D. from City College of New York before joining UMCP shortly after as an assistant professor.
