Rate My Professor Xuejun Wang

Xuejun Wang, M.D., Ph.D., serves as Professor and Director of the MD/PhD Program at the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine. He earned his M.D. in Clinical Medicine from Wuhan University College of Medicine in 1985 and an M.S. in Pathophysiology from the same institution in 1988. He completed his Ph.D. in Anatomy and Structural Biology at the University of South Dakota School of Medicine in 1998. Prior to joining the faculty, he worked as a Research Fellow in the Division of Molecular Cardiovascular Biology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center from 1998 to 2001. He was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of South Dakota in 2001, promoted to Associate Professor in 2005, granted tenure in 2006, and advanced to full Professor and Director of the MD/PhD Program that same year.

Dr. Wang’s research centers on the (dys)regulation of proteolytic pathways in cardiovascular physiology and pathophysiology, with emphasis on protein quality control mechanisms including the ubiquitin-proteasome system, autophagy, and proteostasis in heart failure and related conditions. His work has been supported by multiple NIH R01 grants and American Heart Association awards. He has received the Carl J. Wiggers Award from the American Physiological Society. Dr. Wang maintains an active role in graduate and medical education through teaching in basic biomedical sciences including biochemistry, molecular biology, anatomy, histology, physiology, cell biology, and transgenics. His contributions include leadership in the MD/PhD program and extensive grant-funded investigations into cardiac protein degradation pathways.