Since joining UMass Medical School in 20017, Dean Flotte has led numerous successful initiatives elevating the academic stature of the institution, including establishing the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences; establishment of neurosurgery, urology and ophthalmology as academic departments; recruitment of numerous department chairs; and development of the Advanced Therapeutics Cluster. During Flotte’s time as dean of the School of Medicine, class size has increased from 103 to 162; a revised curriculum has been developed and implemented including “Learning Communities” guided by faculty mentors. in 2016, the medical school opened its first regional campus in Springfield, Mass. The research enterprise of the institution has grown to more than $280 million and a new 512,000-square-foot multiuse facility was built to accommodate the growing clinical and translational research laboratories as well as provide a new educational home for faculty and students.

An internationally known pioneer in human gene therapy, Flotte is currently investigating the use of gene therapy for genetic diseases, including alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency and Tay-Sachs disease. In 1995, he led the team at Johns Hopkins that became the first to use the apparently harmless adeno-associated virus, or AAV, as a vehicle to deliver corrective genes to targeted sites in the body, including the damaged airways of adults with cystic fibrosis. He is the author of more than 250 scholarly papers and his research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Alpha One Foundation. Since 2015, Flotte has also been editor-in-chief of gene therapy’s oldest journal family, Human Gene Therapy.