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Harris Pastides is the Vice President for Research and Health Sciences at the University of South Carolina and Executive Director of the USC Research Foundation. A native of New York City, he earned his B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University at Albany in 1975. He received his Masters of Public Health (in 1977) and his PhD in Epidemiology (in 1980) from Yale University.

As Vice President for Research and Health Sciences, Pastides helps build the university’s research base by organizing the infrastructure necessary to enhance faculty scholarship and increase external grant support across all disciplines. This includes supporting for individual faculty members’ research endeavors activities through the Office of Sponsored Awards Management (SAM) and the Intellectual Property Office.

The Vice President for Research and Health Sciences is also charged with encouraging interdisciplinary research, and facilitating successful USC relationships with federal and state agencies, foundations, and corporations. Additionally, Pastides has responsibility for attracting support for the development of the University’s new research campus and increasing USC's participation in the economic development of South Carolina through resources such as USC businessLINK and the USC Columbia Technology Incubator and by establishing public and private partnerships throughout the state.

Prior to assuming his current responsibilities Pastides served as Dean of the University’s Arnold School of Public Health and professor with tenure in its Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics from 1998-2003.

Before joining the USC faculty, he served as a Professor of Epidemiology and Chairman of the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. From 1987 to 1988, he was a Senior Fulbright Research Fellow at the University of Athens, Greece, where he conducted research on dietary risk factors for gallbladder disease in women. In 1994 and 1995, he served as consultant and advisor to the World Health Organization in Geneva, where he developed programs in global environmental health, mainly for developing nations.

Pastides’ research has been supported by agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. He has received awards and honors from The National Cancer Institute and the American College of Epidemiology, and has published in journals such as The American Journal of Preventative Medicine, The American Journal of Sports Medicine and Epidemiology. His Foundations of Cancer Epidemiology (written with Philip Nasca) is a popular course textbook in revisions for a second edition.