Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
Dr. Jose A. Torres-Ruiz
Jose A. Torres-Ruiz, PhD, earned a B.S. in Chemistry with a minor in Biology from the Pontifical Catholic University of PR in 1982. He went to earn a master鈥檚 degree in 1985 and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1987 from Washington State University in Pullman, WA. In 1988, he joined the faculty at Ponce School of Medicine (renamed Ponce Health Sciences University in 2014) as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, and later promoted to the ranks of Associate Professor and Full Professor in 1991 and 1996, respectively. During 1991, he accepted a Visiting Professorship in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Washington State University. In 1995, he was invited to serve as a Vising Professor at the NIH Extramural Associates (EA) Program in Bethesda, MD. The major purpose of the NIH EA Program was to expose candidates to the Grant Management systems at the NIH, NSF, Department of Defense, as well as other federal funding agencies. Through his tenure at the Ponce Health Sciences University (PHSU) he has had the opportunity to play a role in the development of its research enterprise, including Director of the NIH-MBRS Program (1993-2006) Contact PI for the RCMI Program (2006-2023) PI for the PSM/L. Moffitt Comprehensive Cancer Center through the U54 Cancer Partnership grant (2006-2018)Chairman of the Biochemistry Department, Founding Director of the Office for Sponsored Research Projects and Programs, and the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies (2000-2010). He has served as the Provost/ Vice President for Academic Affairs, and in 2018 he was named Chancellor of the PHSU system including academic campuses in Ponce, San Juan, and Saint Louis. For the academic year 2023-2024, he assumed the position of Associate Director of Research at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Puerto Rico. Since 1990, Dr. Torres-Ruiz has served as an expert scientific reviewer for a variety of research and training programs managed through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NSF, the Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture and the Howard Hughes Foundation.
He has been a research and research training consultant for various institutions around USA and Europe, and he has represented PHSU as a Contact PI at research alliances such the HIV/AIDS Research and Training Consortium, the Puerto Rico Translational and Clinical Research Consortium (PRTCRC) the Puerto Rico EpsCoR, and the RCMI Translational Research Network (RTRN).
Dr. Torres-Ruiz has served as a member of various national groups including the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Item Development for the USLME Part I (Biochemistry and Cell Biology).
Through his professional career, he has chaired numerous scientific meeting at prestigious professional forums.
Dr. Torres-Ruiz is the former Chair of the Education and Health Committee under the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce of the South of PR.