Dr. Rehman is a cell biologist, physician scientist and Professor of Biochemistry, Medicine, Pharmacology and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Illinois, College of Medicine. He is also the Benjamin Goldberg Professor and Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics.

Dr. Rehman completed medical school at the Technische Universität München (Technical University of Munich, Germany) and his clinical training in internal medicine and cardiology at the Indiana University, School of Medicine. He originally trained as a chronobiology researcher, studying circadian rhythms of nitrogen metabolism in algae in Munich. During his postdoctoral training, his research focus shifted to vascular biology and vascular regeneration and the use of regenerative progenitor cells or stem cells in cardiovascular disease.

His laboratory currently investigates mechanisms of inflammatory injury, host defense and tissue repair and regeneration during resolution of injury. His group has helped identify mechanisms by which the vascular endothelium interacts with immune cells. The use of computational biology and transcriptomic analysis demonstrates that the vasculature in each major organ has a distinct signature and therefore therapies targeting inflammation and tissue repair in distinct organs such as the lungs, heart and brain need to take into account the heterogeneity of immune cells and vascular endothelial cells in each organ or tissue.