Vice Dean for Academic Affairs

Dr. Michael Brands, physiologist, longtime faculty member and honored educator, is vice dean of academic affairs at the Medical College of Georgia.

Brands joined the medical school faculty 22 years ago and has served the medical school in a variety of roles, including as chair of the MCG Student Academic Promotions and Professionalism Committee and as a member of the MCG Faculty Promotion and Tenure Committee. For 15 years, he directed the medical physiology component, and since 2014, the cardiopulmonary module, for the pre-clinical phase of MCG students’ education.

He is a past recipient of Basic Science Teaching Distinguished Faculty Award from the MCG Faculty Senate and The Graduate School’s Distinguished Teacher Award. He received the medical school’s Exemplary Teaching Award every year from 2012-17.

His past service to the university and medical school has also included serving as the Department of Physiology’s Graduate Program director, organizing an annual Graduate Research Day, chairing the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and serving on the Admissions Committee for the University System of Georgia’s MD/PhD Program.

A Regents’ Professor in the Department of Physiology, Brands is a federally funded investigator who studies the intersection of cardiovascular and renal physiology and its role in controlling hypertension.