Rocky S. Tuan, PhD, received his BA in 1972 from Berea College (Chemistry) and his PhD in 1977 from the Rockefeller University in New York. His postdoctoral research fellowship was at Harvard Medical School in Boston, first in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Children's Hospital, and then from 1978 to 1980 in the Developmental Biology Laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1980, Dr. Tuan was appointed as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1986. In 1988, Dr. Tuan joined Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, to be the Director of Orthopaedic Research and Professor and Vice Chairman in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery with a joint appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. From 1992-1995, Dr. Tuan was the Academic Director of the MD/PhD program at Jefferson, and in 1997, he established the nation’s first Cell and Tissue Engineering PhD program at Jefferson, with the mission of training the next generation of "cross-cultural" biomedical scientists committed to regenerative medicine and the development of functional tissue substitutes. In the fall of 2001, Dr. Tuan joined the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Arthritis, and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), as Chief of the newly created Cartilage Biology and Orthopaedics Branch. In 2004, Dr. Tuan received the Marshall Urist Award for Excellence in Tissue Regeneration Research of the Orthopaedic Research Society. In the Fall of 2009, Dr. Tuan was recruited by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine to be the Founding Director of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Engineering, and as Arthur J. Rooney, Sr Chair Professor and Executive Vice Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, with a joint appointment as Professor in the Department of Bioengineering. Dr. Tuan is currently Co-Director of the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a U.S. Department of Defense funded, national, multi-institutional consortium focused on developing translational regenerative therapies for battlefield injuries. He also founded the Pitt Center for Military Medicine in 2012. At the University of Pittsburgh, he was appointed Distinguished Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery in 2014, and received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award in 2015. Recent awards for Dr. Tuan include the Carnegie Science Award in Life Sciences and the Clemson Award (Society for Biomaterials) in 2016. In 2017, 2018 and 2019, Professor Tuan was elected to the fellowships of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the Chinese Association of Inventions (CAI) and the American Association for Anatomy (AAA) respectively. In 2021, Professor Tuan was also elected to be the fellowships of the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) and the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS), for his accomplishments in innovation and translational research that bring significant impact on society.

Dr. Tuan joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2016 as a Distinguished Visiting Professor, and the Founding Director of the Institute for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. He began his tenure as Vice-Chancellor and President of CUHK in January, 2018.

A widely cited author of more than 450 research papers, Dr. Tuan has lectured extensively, and is the Founding Editor of the developmental biology journal, BIRTH DEFECTS RESEARCH, and the stem cell journal, STEM CELL RESEARCH AND THERAPY. He serves as Associate Editor of STEM CELL TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE, as well as a member of the editorial boards of FASEB JOURNAL and TISSUE ENGINEERING.