Charting the Future of CMGM: An Exclusive with our Chair, Dr. L. Ashley Cowart
Driven by a shared vision to advance collaborations and scientific progress, the Department of Cellular, Molecular, and Genetic Medicine (CMGM) is transforming the future of academic biomedical research in VCU, under the consummate leadership of Dr. L. Ashley Cowart.
Associated with VCU for over 7 years, Dr. Cowart was a professor in the former Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and holds an appointment as a Research Career Scientist at the Richmond, VA Medical Center. Dr. Cowart’s lab works on sphingolipids and their role in regulating cell metabolism in diverse tissues and diseases, including heart disease, liver disease, adipose tissue thermogenesis, and metabolic rewiring of cancer cells. In 2018, she was appointed as the director of the VCU Lipidomics/ Metabolomics Shared Resource Core (VLMC) and a member of the Cancer Cell Signaling research program at VCU Massey Cancer Center. Upon the commencement of the Department of CMGM in March 2025, Dr. Cowart was appointed as the Interim Chair.
Here we share a glimpse of an exclusive interview that Dr. Cowart gave to the CMGM News and Newsletter committee, describing her strategies towards bringing people together to support and boost the growth of CMGM. Our team extends a sincere, heartfelt Thank You to Dr. Cowart for her valuable time.
How did your VCU journey start, and what inspired you to pursue a leadership role in the newly merged CMGM department?
Dr. Sarah Speigel, the former chair of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology program, recruited me to VCU in 2017, and I saw this as a tremendous opportunity to further my research in sphingolipids, bringing unique expertise to metabolic and cardiovascular disease.
I noted that several of the basic science departments had unmet needs, and I was excited when Dr. Arturo Saavedra recognized the need to strengthen basic science in our School of Medicine. As a member and Co-chair of the faculty-led committee charged with designing a plan to realign the basic health science departments, I became truly excited about the potential for a larger, generalist department with multiple, internationally recognized areas of excellence. While I did not directly pursue the leadership of this department, I was surprised and honored when Dr. Saavedra asked me to serve as the interim chair of CMGM. I have thoroughly enjoyed the position thus far; the faculty invigorate my enthusiasm to support them as we all work toward the common goal of making CMGM a top-ranked department by expanding our excellent and impactful research and bolstering our graduate programs and post-doctoral training!
What is your vision for the Department of CMGM over the next few years?
As the interim chair, I would like to facilitate the development of a cohesive new department with a high degree of faculty engagement that will be attractive to candidates for the permanent Department Chair position. Study after study in the social/business psychology literature shows that engagement in the workplace enhances productivity and, most importantly, individual well-being. We come from 3 departments (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Human Genetics, and Physiology and Biophysics) with distinct cultures and histories, which can be woven together to create a new supportive, productive, and exciting culture.
Our size is our advantage; we have more than enough space for numerous areas of strength. We have several areas of expertise, but we can create a truly unique research environment by broadening the application of our available approaches (structural, genetic, metabolic, lipid, computational, etc.) to enhance each of our disease-focused areas. I envision that we can leverage the expertise that not every department or institution has to develop science that sets us apart.
Are there specific areas of research or education that you want to strengthen or expand as a part of CMGM?
We already have numerous areas of excellence, including cancer, neurodegenerative disease, genetics, and lipid biochemistry and signaling. These areas will continue to receive strong support under the umbrella of CMGM, but we also need to identify existing areas to build upon. We have a strong base of structural biology that can be built upon to increase collaborative projects both within CMGM and across the institution. Additionally, we have a prestigious history in Quantitative Genetics, which I would like to reinforce and build. There are few Quantitative Genetics programs in the United States relative to wet lab-based programs, and many of these are housed in the most premier institutions across the nation. It would be a missed opportunity not to capitalize on the expertise we are fortunate to have. I would also like to develop strength in big data analysis using artificial intelligence within the School of Medicine. Of course, these are just some goals and ideas. Other ideas will come from harnessing the collective wisdom of our faculty at the upcoming retreat.
Finally, I want to support faculty in several areas of expertise to develop T32 and other training grants. I am working with our grants office and the OVPRI to develop support to relieve the PIs from administrative burden. That way, the PIs can focus on the science and training aspects of the grants, while the administrators can gather and package the tremendous amount of faculty and institutional data to support these applications. Also, in the area of education, there are several strategic opportunities moving forward, to build upon the success of the current graduate programs.
On that note, is the department working on some collaborative, holistic strategy to increase successful grant funding?
A front-and-center priority is increasing our grant submissions and our funding. To that end, we have a departmental Research Committee that is working on a plan for a structured, small group-based review of outgoing grants. Anecdotally (I have heard from other chairs outside VCU), consistent and committed implementation of this process can tremendously increase success in funding. We are also working on a plan to increase the number of grant submissions by our faculty; there is currently a wide range from those who submit every NIH cycle (and others, including DOD, ACS, etc.) to those who submit 1 grant or less per year. The data for our department shows that the number of submissions tends to correlate with the level of funding. These two tactics will support the growth of our funded research.
Coming to students and post-docs, what are some of the plans to engage and support them while cruising through the CMGM venture?
Postdocs are a crucial group, and they can fall through the cracks without a strong community. The CMGM Postdoctoral Association that we are supporting, and which the Postdocs themselves have created, has truly energized Postdoc engagement at the department level. Though we had a minor hiccup in developing the Student Association, moving forward, I hope that they also coalesce as joyfully and energetically as the Postdoctoral Association has, and we will work toward that goal this academic year!
As the esteemed chair of the CMGM department, how do you propose to enhance the department's visibility both within the institution and externally?
The School of Medicine has about 200 total teaching and research (i.e., non-clinical) faculty, and CMGM comprises about 25% of this total! We house a large fraction of the Massey Cancer Center research members. We are currently highly visible as a new department within the School of Medicine, and rest assured that Dean Saavedra is 200% committed to our success (that is not a typo!). Because of our current strong funding, success in intramural pilot awards, and housing directors of 2 of the largest core facilities at VCU, we have visibility with VCU and the Office of the Vice President for Research Infrastructure. Because we house many of the top educators and several education administrators, our contributions to graduate and medical education are noted and appreciated. We have research areas of notable visibility nationally and internationally in several areas, and we need to make sure each investigator in CMGM feels equally visible to and connected with other investigators. Building our visibility outside the institution will come in part from efforts to strengthen quantitative genetics, increase extramural funding, and develop small working groups to increase team science in research areas in which we are already quite strong.
Lastly, is there any message you would like to leave for the CMGM students, post-docs, faculty, or staff?
Dear Colleagues, this has been a long journey with ups and downs along the way. However, because of your open-mindedness, hopefulness, and willingness to engage, we have accomplished something exceptional. I am truly grateful to you, and I feel deeply honored to lead such a group of outstanding and developing scientists. Building this department has been and will continue to be a team effort; input from each of you is welcome and, in fact, essential to reaching our potential, which is endless.
Thank you for your partnership, and I always welcome your ideas and feedback. I look forward to our numerous upcoming events!
Thank you,
Ashley
By Sumit Saha,
Department of CMGM, VCU SOM
Date: 1 August 2025