Appointment of Jonathan Epstein, MD, to UPHS SVP and Chief Scientific Officer


February 9, 2021

To:Penn Medicine Faculty and Staff

From:J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, Dean and Executive Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System

Kevin B. Mahoney, UPHS CEO


We are pleased to announce the appointment of Jonathan Epstein, MD, to a new role as University of Pennsylvania Health System Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer. Jon is a highly respected and impactful physician-scientist whose leadership within the Perelman School of Medicine has helped propel Penn to a place of pre-eminence in groundbreaking new science that has laid the foundation to a new generation of cures and treatments for a variety of diseases. He will continue in his roles as Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice Dean and the William Wikoff Smith Professor of Cardiovascular Research in the Perelman School of Medicine, and take on new responsibilities within the health system.

This new role is an important next step to further integration of the Perelman School of Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania Health System across all our mission areas. Jon’s areas of focus will include initiatives to further align our academic and clinical enterprises, and to foster seamless translational, clinical and population science research across the system.

Under Jon’s leadership as PSOM Chief Scientific Officer, a role he has held since 2015, we have been on an impressive trajectory in every category measuring our success in research and education. Our sponsored program and NIH awards have increased by more than 30% since FY15. We have the largest and most diverse Biomedical Graduate Studies program that we’ve ever had, and we continue to recruit talented and innovative physicians, scientists, and leaders.

Jon’s PSOM leadership roles have included chair of the department of Cell and Developmental Biology and scientific director of the Penn Cardiovascular Institute. He directed the research residency program in the department of Medicine and was founding co-director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

A renowned figure in stem cell and cardiovascular biology, Dr. Epstein is a board-certified cardiologist who joined the Penn faculty in 1996. His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of cardiovascular development and implications for understanding and developing new therapeutic agents for cardiac conditions, including mapping the potential for use of CAR T cells to treat fibrosis associated with heart failure. He serves or has served on the NIH Council of Counselors, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Council, the Advisory Panel of the “All of Us” precision medicine research program, and he has served as chair and standing member of NIH study sections. He is a past President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, a member of the American Association of Physicians, College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the National Academy of Medicine, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Please join us in congratulating Jon on this well-deserved new role at Penn Medicine.