Brian Strom

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It should be no surprise to see Strom on this list, with the inaugural chancellor of the Rutgers School of Biomedical and Health Sciences most recently recognized as No. 2 on the NJBIZ Health Care Power 50 list earlier this year. Throughout the worst of the pandemic, he served as a prominent source of information about COVID-19 in New Jersey. And in January, he was recognized for that work by his peers with the Heart of BioNJ Award, bestowed by the life sciences trade association.

In April, One RBHS: The Way Forward was released, a strategic plan to guide the next chapter of work at Rutgers School of Biomedical and Health Sciences. “This ambitious road map builds upon our many accomplishments and proposes new and exciting avenues as we drive toward our vision to be a model for health care access and quality, research and innovation, interprofessional education and community engagement within the next five years,” Strom said at the time.

For the start of the fall semester, he’s speaking out about monkeypox. In August, Rutgers announced it would conduct the largest study of children at high risk of developing Type 1 diabetes; Strom is a coinvestigator on the team, which aims to develop a tool to help clinicians in identifying these children.

Among his other achievements at Rutgers is the establishment of a formal partnership with RWJBarnabas Health to create New Jersey’s largest and most comprehensive academic health system. That relationship will evolve further (not only is RWJ involved with the project, but so is Hackensack Meridian Health) with the $665 million New Jersey Innovation and Technology Hub coming to New Brunswick, which Princeton University will also use. There, the Rutgers Translational Research Facility and a new academic medical building will be components of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, under Strom’s guidance.