UT System Board of Regents chair: Chicago researcher Reiser 'our top choice to provide leadership to UTMB'

The University of Texas (UT) System announced on Thursday that Dr. Jochen Reiser is the lone finalist for the position of president of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, according to a press release.

Texas law requires the public university system to wait three weeks before officially hiring Reiser, the current chairman of the department of internal medicine at Rush University Medical Center and the Ralph C. Brown, MD, professor of medicine at Rush University in Chicago.

A presidential search advisory committee recommended Reiser to the UT System Board of Regents, the release said. 

“The regents met with several outstanding candidates and unanimously agreed that Dr. Reiser is our top choice to provide leadership to UTMB as it expands its role in serving the people of Texas and beyond,” Kevin Eltife, who chairs the board, said in the release. “We are grateful for the thoughtful work of the search advisory committee and UT System leadership whose guidance and recommendations led us to this day.”

Per the release, Reiser is a top researcher in the field of kidney disease, with much focus on molecular biology and genetics. 

He helms a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research laboratory that investigates the causes of kidney disease and develops novel therapies to fight renal diseases. 

Reiser has 200 research papers under his belt, the release said.

“UTMB is recognized in all three pillars that are essential to a world-class academic health institution – education, research and clinical care,” UT System Chancellor James B. Milliken said in the release. “We were delighted with the interest in the UTMB presidency conveyed by potential candidates from across the country. With Dr. Reiser’s record of leadership in all these areas, I’m pleased with the regents’ unanimous support of his candidacy.” 

The UT System said that Reiser is a graduate of Ruprecht Karls University in Heidelberg, Germany, having done his residency at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and his fellowship in nephrology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School.