Leading researcher joins faculty as industry professor of bioengineering

Dr. Gene DiResta

Polytechnic Institute of NYU has appointed Dr.Gene DiResta as the new director of its biomedical engineering masters program. He will also serve as director and advisor to the undergraduate pre-med program.

Dr. DiResta joins NYU-Poly from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where he worked for 24 years, the last 12 of which as the director of its Orthopaedics Research Laboratory where he helped to develop medical devices, instruments and processes related to cancer treatment.

Dr. DiResta has advised undergraduate, graduate and medical students in research projects over the past twenty years at a variety of NYC universities and has taught graduate bioengineering courses at NYU-Poly.

“We in the Chemical and Biological Sciences Department are pleased and excited to have Dr. DiResta join our faculty,” said Dr. Bruce Garetz, CBS department head. “The students in our biomedical engineering program will be well served by Dr. DiResta's wealth of teaching, research and industrial experience.”

Dr. DiResta received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Polytechnic in 1981. He received his M.S. in chemical engineering from NYU as a member of its last graduate engineering class.

“Polytechnic and NYU are special to me and returning with the intention of giving back to both of these great educational institutions is invigorating and humbling,” notes Dr. DiResta. “I look forward to learning from my students and participating in the stimulating discussions that will occur.”

His ultimate goal is to restore Polytechnic’s biomedical engineering program to national prominence. When he was in the program, Dr. DiResta says that it “was the strongest in the tri-state area and known nationwide for its faculty and quantitative system's approach to the study of biology and medicine.”

The program was suspended for a time and now that it’s been revived, Dr. DiResta plans to create courses that “will provide students with the analytic and critical thinking skills required to become members and leaders of medical and industrial research teams investigating medical problems in hopes of developing novel therapeutic strategies.”

Dr. DiResta plans to integrate Polytechnic’s revamped biomedical engineering program within the NYU medical and research community and then into the NYC hospital system. He also aims to create an internship program for graduate students so that they can apply the intellectual tools obtained from their coursework to the medical community.