Jason Wertheim

Dr. Wertheim is a surgeon-scientist and biomedical engineer. He is Associate Vice President for Health Research at the University of Arizona. He is Vice Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson. Dr. Wertheim is a transplant surgeon, and he directs a multidisciplinary laboratory in biomedical engineering, studying the response of cells to grow into mature tissue to develop cells for therapy and transplantation.

He received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and MD and PhD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He trained in general surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital and completed a fellowship in abdominal transplant surgery at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center.

Dr. Wertheim's research laboratory is centered on biomedical engineering, developing biomaterials for tissue engineering applications. His laboratory also investigates the growth and differentiation of cells into mature tissue liver, kidney and vascular tissue within biomaterial scaffolds to model disease or develop cells for therapy and tissue transplantation. Dr. Wertheim was a member of the NIH (Re)Building a Kidney (RBK) Consortium until its conclusion in 2025. This consortium developed kidney cell types and biomaterials to repair and regenerate renal tissue. In 2019, Dr. Wertheim was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for his kidney-related research.