Vice President for Health Sciences and Technology

Michael Friedlander is vice president for health sciences and technology at Virginia Tech, where he also serves as the founding executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and the senior dean for research at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. Since its inception in 2010, he has built the reseach institute's research programs to more than $150 million in grant value with more than 35 research teams and over 400 investigators, students and support staff.  He was appointed vice president for health sciences and technology in March 2016.

A highly accomplished scientist, Friedlander has served as the principal investigator on multiple research grants on brain processes that mediate vision, developmental plasticity, and traumatic brain injury. His research has been published in leading journals such as Academic Medicine, Cell, J. Neuroscience, Nature, Neuron, PNAS and Science. Dr. Friedlander has held two endowed professor positions – as the Evelyn McKnight professor of learning and memory in aging at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine and as the Robertson professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, Friedlander served as director of neuroscience initiatives at Baylor College of Medicine and as the founding chair of the department of neurobiology, as the founding director of the Neurobiology Research Center and as director of the Civitan International Research Center on Intellectual Disabilities at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.