A tenured professor with the admiration and respect of his colleagues, Dr. Dan Simionescu could be resting on the laurels he continues to amass. However, he and spouse Dr. Aggie Simionescu continue to create projects for themselves in many venues. Aggie and Dan served as editors for the online textbook “Physiologic and Pathologic Angiogenesis—Signaling Mechanisms and Targeted Therapy,” 2017. The book’s second edition has been downloaded 7000+ times; the first, more than 26000. Currently, Aggie and Dan serve as guest editors for the journal Bioengineering, editing the special issue, “Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Tissue Regeneration.” The issue will be published in a 2018 issue of Bioengineering, published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland. Finally, it is notable that the Simionescus have created a lab whose students are known for being tight-knit and loyal. Remarkably, they are also known for warmly welcoming the many students who seek out the Simionescu lab. Editor
On November 1, 2017, a letter left Romania, crossed an ocean and landed in Dr. Dan Simionescu’s mailbox. Opening it brought the surprise and pleasant feelings that attend an unlooked-for honor: “In gratitude for your sustained cooperation and significant support, for your meritorious academic services and for being a model and inspiration to our academia through your personal example, I am delighted to announce you that that the Senate of the University of Medicine and Pharmacy from Tirgu Mures decided to grant you the highest honors, the title of Doctor Honoris Causa.”
At Clemson, Dan is the Harriet and Jerry Dempsey Professor of Bioengineering; a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering; Director of the Biocompatibility and Tissue Regeneration Laboratories; and Deputy Director, Clinical Research Programs and Operations for the Department of Bioengineering. In the South Carolina Bioengineering Center for Regeneration and Formation of Tissues, Clemson’s first NIH COBRE Center, Dr. Simionescu directs one of the Center’s two cores, the Cell, Tissue and Molecular Analysis Core. These cores support the target faculty, the Center’s primary concern, in achieving financial independence through research grants.
In Dan’s letter, along with a request to speak at the awards ceremony in Tirgu Mures, came an invitation to attend University Days, a traditional event held annually to “celebrate in a festive, academic way” the long series of events that are of great importance for the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Tirgu Mures.
Aggie and Dan were already planning to attend a conference in December. Throughout 2017, they served as co-organizers of a meeting in Cape Town South Africa’s Groote Schuur Hospital on December 2-4 celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the 1st Heart Transplant. So, the couple left home for Cape Town on November 27, 2017. On December 4, they served as Chairs and Moderators of the “Cardiac Valve Repair, Remodeling and Regeneration” session (Dan) and the “Tissue Engineering and Regeneration” (Aggie) session of the International Society for Applied Cardiovascular Biology. Each made an oral presentation: Dan spoke on “In vitro regeneration of living aortic and pulmonary valve roots and preclinical testing”; Aggie and Clemson alumnus Chris DeBorde (now at Humacyte Inc., a vascular tissue engineering company) presented “Mitral Valve Tissue Engineering — a model for investigating valve degeneration.”
Dan had this to say about the reasons for the 50th celebration, “The first human heart transplant in the world was performed at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, on December 3, 1967 by Dr. Christiaan Barnard, MD, PhD. Although many groups in the US and elsewhere were experimenting with transplantation in experimental animals, Dr Barnard had the vision and the courage to perform the first transplant in a human. This first surgery paved the way for a new era of life-saving transplantation worldwide and stimulated novel biomedical engineering research into development of tools and machines necessary for the complicated surgery. To commemorate this event, the Groote Schuur Hospital and the University of Cape Town hosted a 3-day program celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the 1st Heart Transplant under the umbrella logo of “Courage and Innovation.”
This unique event brought together under one roof the most outstanding group of transplant surgeons in the world. These surgeons were invited by Professor Peter Zilla, Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at Groote Schuur, to share their experiences with heart transplantation. On the conference’s 2nd day, December 3, people who knew Dr Christiaan Barnard personally and worked with the “surgeon who dared,” described him throughout the years as kind, ingenious and compassionate. One after another, surgeons from Europe, Asia and the Americas described how after December 3rd, 1967, they started a heart transplant program in their own country.
On the final day of the conference, December 4, a scientific session was hosted by the International Society for Applied Cardiovascular Research (ISACB), on which Aggie and Dan serve as Executive Council Members. The session covered a variety of topics including arterial remodeling, aneurysms, atherosclerosis, cardiac valves, tissue engineering and translational challenges. Notably, ISACB was born in Cape Town exactly 30 years ago, after a transplant meeting commemorating the then 20-year anniversary of the first transplant. Sessions were, among others, “Meeting cardiovascular medical needs in developing nations”; “Transplantation; 50 years on,” in which surgeons discussed the future of the field; and “Assisted circulation; center player at last;” emphasizing the importance of innovation in surgery.
Following the meeting’s close, Aggie and Dan, natives of Romania, needed to be in Tirgu Mures for Dan’s acceptance of his Doctor Honoris Causa. Few may realize that Cape Town to Romania is virtually a straight shot. Moreover, the length of a continent (by air: 5,413 miles), a splash of the Mediterranean and a bit of Bulgaria are negligible to people headed to a beloved home.
The award ceremony honored Dan and Professor Mark Anthony Slevin of Manchester Metropolitan University, both of whom were granted the Doctor Honoris Causa. In his speech on December 14, Professor Leonard Azamfirei, Professor of UMF Tirgu-Mureş, pointed out that the two titles of Doctor Honoris Causa were given to “personalities who have long been distinguished by scientific activity, but equally through the contribution through which their day-to-day, scientific, academic, and professional activity was linked to the good work of the university.”
Dr. Azamfirei also pointed out that UMF Tirgu-Mureş has proved “quite parsimonious with the awarding of this title, which represents the highest honorary title that a university can give.” The policy of the university is to grant this title only if those who are proposed to receive such a high distinction have, over time, demonstrated real, concrete, quantifiable involvement in the academic life of our university. For this reason, we now have two personalities of world science who, through their work in the last five or six years, have decisively contributed to the prestige of our university in the country and beyond the country. The two who will receive this title today are Professor Dan Teodor Simionescu and Professor Mark Anthony Slevin.”
Recalling decades of research, Dan said, “Aggie and I have been inspired by these recent events. We will continue to foster courage and innovation in our students and collaborators and target the highest quality research and development of devices and treatments for the betterment of patients’ lives worldwide.”
