Chuck Murry is a physician‐scientist at the University of Washington, where he directs the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine. He grew up in North Dakota, where his family raised horses, ate competitively and honed punning skills at the dinner table. After completing his bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the University of North Dakota, he entered medical school at Duke University with plans of becoming a surgeon. A series of events initiated by poor planning skills left him hooked to heart research, however, leading him to enter a PhD program in experimental pathology and dreaming of developing new treatments for heart disease. After completing his MDPhD training at Duke he transitioned to the University of Washington for residency training in pathology, followed by clinical and research fellowship training. Having spent 31 continuous years in formal educational programs, he was no longer employable in the private sector, and he began his career as a member of the UW School of Medicine faculty. As a faculty member, Murry pioneered the use of stem cells to regenerate the heart and understand heart development and disease. His group is one of the world’s leaders in heart regeneration, with plans to begin first‐in‐human clinical trials in 2020. At the UW Murry helped found the Center for Cardiovascular Biology and the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine. He has received numerous awards along the way, including a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, election to the Washington State Academy of Sciences, fellowships in the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute for Biomedicine and Engineering, as well as winning multiple awards for outstanding teaching from UW medical students. He serves as an elected member of the Board of Directors for the International Society for Stem Cell Research, where he has led efforts to bring stem cell discoveries into the clinic, as well as to shut down predatory stem cell clinics. He is married to his sweetie of 39 years, Rene Murry, whom he met in a blood bank. They have two brilliant and beautiful daughters and two vertically challenged dogs.
