Bryan Hsu awarded faculty fellowship

Bryan Hsu, assistant professor of biological sciences in the College of Science, has been awarded the Blackwood Junior Faculty Fellowship by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The Blackwood Junior Faculty Fellowship was established in the College of Science with a generous donation from Mary Nolen Blackwood ’73 and Willis P. Blackwood ’72. Their goal is to advance life sciences education while fostering business and entrepreneurial opportunities. Created in 2006, the fellowship provides support for a leading faculty member at the rank of assistant or associate professor, awarded for a three-year term with possible renewal.

A member of the Virginia Tech community since 2020, Hsu is involved in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Program as well as in several programmatic functions of the Center for Emerging Zoonotic and Arthropod-borne Pathogens. He teaches General Microbiology, a high-enrollment core class required for several curricula, as well as Microbiomes, which exposes juniors and seniors to primary research literature. He has advised six postdoctoral researchers, four doctoral students, three post-baccalaureate students, and 14 undergraduate students.

Hsu’s research has received more than $2.5 million in intramural and extramural research funding.

Hsu has 28 peer-reviewed publications and has delivered 31 invited presentations. He holds several patents that describe technologies developed in his lab and recently received the By Example award from the Virginia Tech Center for Tech Commercialization in recognition of his efforts. These technologies are the basis for two recently founded startup companies.

Hsu received his two bachelor’s degrees from University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a Rosenbloom postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School with Pamela Silver in the Department of Systems Biology.