Andrew W. Tai, M.D., Ph.D., has been appointed assistant dean for early medical education in the Medical School, effective July 17, 2023. He will oversee the pre-clinical medical student education program and work closely with the Office of Admissions and the Office of Health Equity and Inclusion to develop robust pre-matriculation and pathway programs for the Medical School.
Tai began teaching at the medical school as director of the pre-clinical gastroenterology curriculum in 2014. He has helped to guide the medical student pre-clinical curriculum through several major transformations, beginning with the transition from a two-year to a one-year pre-clinical curriculum, now called the Scientific Trunk. He has served as assistant director of the Scientific Trunk since 2018. His teaching has been recognized by multiple awards for undergraduate and graduate medical education, including the Kaiser Permanente Award for Excellence in Teaching (the highest award for pre-clinical teaching in the Medical School), the Elizabeth Crosby Award for outstanding teaching of medical students in a basic science area, the Richard D. Judge Award for excellence in medical student teaching in Internal Medicine, and multiple Faculty Teaching Awards from the graduating gastroenterology fellows.
An associate professor of internal medicine/gastroenterology and microbiology and immunology, he has an active basic science research program focusing on the cell biology of RNA virus infection, originally hepatitis C virus and more recently dengue, Zika, and SARS-CoV-2. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and a fellow of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).
Tai earned his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard College and his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Weill Cornell Medical College and the Tri-Institutional M.D.-Ph.D. program in New York. He completed an internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital followed by a clinical and research fellowship in gastroenterology and hepatology at the Massachusetts General Hospital before joining the University of Michigan Medical School as faculty in 2009.