Ajay Rana's Biography

Ajay Rana, Endowed Professor & Director of Research, University of Illinois at Chicago

Dr. Ajay Rana is an Endowed Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Surgery Division of Surgical Oncology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prof. Rana completed his Ph.D. in science (Biochemistry) in 1989 at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India. Before joining the University of Illinois at Chicago in August 2015, Prof. Rana was a tenured Professor at the Loyola University Medical Center from 2007-2015. Prof. Rana completed his postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in cell signaling and Cancer Biology. Soon after postdoctoral training in 2000, Prof. Rana was recruited at the Texas A & M University Medical School as an Assistant Professor. Prof. Rana is well recognized in cell signaling and breast cancer fields, especially in kinases, lipid biochemistry and small molecule inhibitors of kinases. Prof. Rana has received several awards and honors for his research work, including American Cancer Society (Massachusetts) young scientist award and Indian Scientists in Cancer Research. Prof. Rana also received honorary visiting Professorship from many universities, including Iowa State University, Nanchang University (China) and Windsor University School of Medicine, St. Kitts. Prof. Rana has authored more than 70 peer reviewed articles in very prestigious journals. Prof. Rana serves on multiple editorial boards of leading scientific journals, such as Cancer Research, Science Reporter, etc. including dozens of other prestigious journals as an ad-hoc reviewer. The current focus of Dr. Rana’s laboratory is to delineate the roles of MAP Kinases and other related proteins in breast, pancreatic and liver cancer, with special emphasis to identify mechanism based targetted therapies