Brian Strom, who has served as the chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences since the position was created in 2013, leading the school through a number of transformative moments, will step down from the role at the end of the fall semester, Rutgers President William Tate announced Thursday.
It is unclear if Strom is leaving the role voluntarily or if he is a part of the natural turnover that happens when a new executive takes over.
Tate, in a note to the Rutgers community announcing the decision, said the school will announce an interim chancellor and plans for a nationwide search in “the coming weeks.”
The school should have no shortage of applicants for what many perceive as one of the best jobs in this sector in the country. It is such, in many ways, because of Strom.
Tate had high praise for Strom in the letter.
“Dr. Strom — an eminent clinical epidemiologist and a founder of the field of pharmacoepidemiology — has brought vision, passion, energy, and wisdom to his job every day, and his imprint on Rutgers’ excellence is unmistakable,” he wrote.
“Under his leadership, Rutgers Health has become a research powerhouse that has served the health needs of New Jersey with outstanding patient care, health professions education, biomedical research, and community service.”
Among Strom’s many achievements:
- Recruiting nationally prominent faculty across a wide range of disciplines and supporting the establishment of the Rutgers Global Health Institute, the Brain Health Institute, the Rutgers Institute for Translational Medicine and Science, and many other research-based centers and institutes;
- Attracting $4 billion in federal funding over the past 12 years ($608m in fiscal 2025 alone), including two major NIH Clinical and Translational Sciences Awards to translate clinical research into patient treatments;
- Combining Rutgers’ and the former UMDNJ’s nursing schools into the School of Nursing, now one of the nation’s top-ranked nursing schools;
- Signing an affiliation agreement with RWJBarnabas Health to form New Jersey’s premier academic health system to better serve the state’s residents;
- Facilitating major capital projects now under way to better serve Rutgers’ health care mission, including the massive renovation of the Medical Science Building in Newark and construction of the 13-story Robert Wood Johnson Medical School building in New Brunswick;
- Launching the Rutgers Health Service Corps, enabling students and other community members to pursue volunteer opportunities to improve health and wellness across the state;
- Forming the Rutgers Equity Alliance for Community Health, addressing social determinants of health in Rutgers’ host cities.
Strom also was noted for this work during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he helped position Rutgers as a leading force in the battle against the disease. Rutgers researchers conducted vaccine trials, developed new tests for COVID, conducted vital research on the effectiveness of personal protective equipment, while graduating its 2020 class early so they could join the front lines of the nation’s response to the coronavirus.
Strom has championed the Board of Governors-approved plan for Rutgers’ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and New Jersey Medical School to seek accreditation as a unified Rutgers School of Medicine.
The merger, considered controversial by many, will strengthen Rutgers’ standing among the best academic medical centers in the country.
Tate closed his note with this:
“There is much more that can and will be said about the work Brian Strom has accomplished as chancellor, and I want to applaud him for a historic and highly successful tenure at Rutgers,” he wrote.
“New Jersey has benefited greatly from his efforts in shaping Rutgers Health, and we are a stronger university overall because of his leadership of our biomedical division. We look forward to celebrating this in various ways in the coming months.”
