Larry McIntire founded the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University and spent a lifelong career shaping biomedical engineering as a scholar, mentor and institutional leader. He died Jan.23, 2026 at 82.
“Larry was a remarkable scholar and a guiding force in our community, to whom we all owe a great debt of gratitude,” said Antonios Mikos, Rice’s Louis Calder Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and director of the Biomaterials Lab, the Center for Excellence in Tissue Engineering and the J.W. Cox Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering at Rice. “He will be deeply missed.”
McIntire joined Rice faculty in 1970 after earning his doctorate from Princeton University. At Rice, he was a central figure in establishing the bioengineering department and served as its inaugural chair, helping shape its development into one of the nation’s top 10 biomedical engineering programs in the nation. He also led Rice’s Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering and was named the E.D. Butcher Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering.
During his tenure at Rice, McIntire played a key role in building interdisciplinary partnerships across Rice and the Texas Medical Center. In 2003, McIntire moved to Atlanta to become the Wallace H. Coulter Chair of the joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University.
“Larry was a very distinguished scholar and outstanding leader of the field,” said Gang Bao, Rice’s Foyt Family Professor of Bioengineering and a professor of chemistry, mechanical engineering and materials science and nanoengineering. “This is indeed very sad news, and a huge loss for the bioengineering community.”
McIntire’s research focused on biological transport phenomena and tissue engineering, particularly in the cardiovascular system, examining the dynamics of blood cells in the circulatory system and how fluid mechanical forces influence cellular metabolism and gene regulation. His work was recognized with numerous awards and distinctions, including election as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 1992, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998 and a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2001.
Many of his former students have gone on to become leaders in the field ⎯ an accomplishment he ranked among those he was “most proud of,” as he noted in video remarks recorded on the occasion of the 25-year celebration of the Department of Bioengineering at Rice.
“He played a very influential role in many of our careers, including my own,” said Cynthia Reinhart-King, who now chairs the Department of Bioengineering at Rice as the John W. Cox Chair of Bioengineering. “He was incredibly supportive of everyone in the field, and he truly was a pioneer. While he left Houston several years ago, my sense was that he had a deep love for Rice and was cheering us on from Georgia. This is a huge loss for our field.”
The Larry McIntire Research Fund in Bioengineering, established during his lifetime, honors his role in building the department and supporting generations of students and researchers. The fund recognizes McIntire as “a distinguished academic and biomedical engineer” who helped integrate engineering, biology and medicine at Rice and the TMC and became “an international leader in bioengineering research and education.”