Andrés J. García, Rae and Frank H. Neely Chair in Mechanical Engineering and Regents' Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Director of the Interdisciplinary Bioengineering Graduate Program, has been elected 2017-2018 President-elect of the Society for Biomaterials and will serve as President of the Society for the 2018 - 2019 term. The Society for Biomaterials is a multidisciplinary society of academic, healthcare, governmental and business professionals dedicated to promoting advances in all aspects of biomaterial science. The Society was formally established in 1974 and is the oldest scientific organization in the field of biomaterials.

Garcia received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with Honors from Cornell University in 1991. He received M.S.E. (1992) and Ph.D. (1996) degrees in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in cell and molecular biology at the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.

García’s research program centers on integrating innovative engineering, materials science, and cell biology concepts and technologies to generate (i) novel insights into the regulation of adhesive forces and mechanotransduction, and (ii) cell-instructive materials for tissue repair in regenerative medicine applications. His research has received funding from the NIH, NSF, Coulter Foundation, Arthritis Foundation and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He has received several distinctions, including the NSF CAREER Award, Arthritis Investigator Award, Georgia Tech’s CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, Young Investigator Award from the Society for Biomaterials, Georgia Tech’s Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award, and the Clemson Award for Basic Science from the Society for Biomaterials. He serves on the editorial board of leading biomaterial and regenerative medicine journals. 

He has been recognized as a top Latino educator by the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. He has been elected a Fellow of Biomaterials Science and Engineering by the International Union of Societies of Biomaterials Science and Engineering, AIMBE, and AAAS.