The William Wikoff Smith Professorship of Cardiovascular Research
The W.W. Smith Charitable Trust established the Professorship in 2004, continuing the Trust’s long-standing partnership with the University to advance their common missions of education and biomedical research.
The Trust was established in 1977 by the bequest of William Wikoff Smith (1919–1976). Mr. Smith successfully led the expansion of Kewanee Oil Company, which had been founded by his great-grandfather. He attended the Wharton School in 1937 and 1938; his father, Wikoff Smith, graduated from Penn in 1897. In addition to funding projects in basic needs, medical research, and education, the Trust supports maritime heritage efforts—sailing and shipbuilding were among William Wikoff Smith’s favorite activities.
Over the past 35 years, the Trust’s extraordinary support has helped numerous Penn students pursue their undergraduate education. At the Perelman School of Medicine, the Trust has allowed many scientists and physicians to conduct important basic research projects in cancer, AIDS, heart disease, and diabetes—studies that have yielded breakthrough results and that might not have been possible without this support.
Current Chairholder
Rajan Jain, MD
Rajan Jain, MD, is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology, the Founding Co-Director, Penn Measey Scholars in Molecular Medicine, and a Faculty Advisor, Educational Affairs Penn Cardiovascular Institute.
Dr. Jain leads a research team of students, physicians and scientists to understand how cellular identity is achieved and maintained in health and altered in disease. The Jain lab employs molecular, genetic, imaging, and biochemical approaches to decipher the rules that govern three-dimensional organization of the genome. His team has shown that spatial positioning of the genome in the nucleus is essential for cardiac progenitor cell lineage restriction and contributes to cardiac disease. They have extended these studies to discover molecular mechanisms that choreograph genome folding to regulate fate determination. The team is unraveling how these processes regulate stemness in progenitor cells across a multitude of tissues, including the lung, brain and heart.
Dr. Jain’s findings provide a mechanistic framework to understand how human mutations in epigenetic factors may cause disease, supporting the laboratory’s goal to reveal how three-dimensional genome organization safeguards cellular identity. The impact of the team’s work has been recognized by the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, Allen Foundation, and NIH Office of the Director (New Innovator Award and Transformative Research Award).
Beyond the lab, Dr. Jain is actively involved in local and national efforts to identify, recruit, train and promote the next generation of physician-scientists. He was the recipient of the American Society of Clinical Investigation’s (ASCI) Seldin-Smith Award for Pioneering Research in 2021 and elected to the Council of ASCI in 2023. He is also clinically active as a general cardiologist and primarily cares for patients in the Cardiac Care Unit.
Dr. Jain earned his BA in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, received his MD from the NYU School of Medicine, and completed his internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship at the Perelman School of Medicine.
Previous Chairholders
- Jonathan A. Epstein, MD 2004–2025