A professor of medicine, pathology, oncology and cell biology, with joint appointments in molecular biology and genetics, Dr. Dang directs the school of medicine research enterprise. In that capacity, he oversees the offices for research administration, policy coordination and technology transfer; directs the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering; explores funding opportunities for interdisciplinary research; and creates an environment conducive to innovative and collaborative inquiries. He ensures that Johns Hopkins has state-of-the-art research facilities and policies that foster the advance of basic research discoveries to the marketplace and bedside.

A native of South Viet Nam, Dr. Dang is one of the 10 children of the late Dang Van Chieu, M.D., Viet Nam’s first neurosurgeon and dean of the University of Saigon’s School of Medicine. In 1967, his parents sent him to the United States, where he lived with a family in Flint, Mich. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and a doctorate in chemistry from Georgetown University before entering Johns Hopkins as a medical student in 1978. Receiving his M.D. in 1982, he has remained at Johns Hopkins ever since.

A practicing hematologist-oncologist, Dr. Dang has written more than 180 scientific papers. He is senior editor of the medical journal Cancer Research and serves on the editorial boards of eight other scientific publications, including the Journal of Molecular Medicine, Current Cancer Therapy Reviews, Drug Discovery Today: Disease Mechanisms, Journal of Clinical Investigations, Neoplasia, Clinical and Translational Science and The Vietnamese Medical Journal.

Elected to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine in 2006, Dr. Dang has received the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute MERIT award and numerous other accolades. He has sponsored 10 NIH physician-scientist awardees and mentored more than a dozen Ph.D. candidates as well as dozens of postdoctoral fellows. He oversees his own research lab with more than $1 million in research grants. In 2005, in honor of his achievements and the fact that he is the highest ranking physician of Vietnamese descent in academic medicine, not just in the United States but in the world, the Vietnamese American National Gala gave him its Gold Torch Award for medicine and education.