New Dean Named at UTHealth Medical School
Barbara Stoll, MD, has been named the H. Wayne Hightower Distinguished Professor in the Medical Sciences and Dean of UTHealth Medical School. Dr. Stoll joins UTHealth from Emory University School of Medicine, where she was the George W. Brumley, Jr., Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics. She assumed her new post on October 1, succeeding Giuseppe Colasurdo, MD, who was named president of UTHealth in 2012 and has been serving in both roles since that time.
Dr. Stoll earned her MD degree from Yale Medical School. She competed a pediatric internship and residency at Babies Hospital, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and a neonatology fellowship at Emory University School of Medicine. She subsequently served as an associate scientist at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh. She then joined the University of Goteborg, in Sweden as a visiting scientist. She returned to the United States in 1984, accepting a post as assistant professor in the Department of Medicine of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
Dr. Stoll joined the Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine in 1986. During her tenure at Emory, she was promoted to full professor of pediatrics and was named vice-chair for research in the Department of Pediatrics. She assumed the role as chair of the Department in 2004. Dr. Stoll’s research interests include neonatal clinical trials and the epidemiology of, diagnosis, and treatment of neonatal infectious diseases.
President of SUNY Upstate Medical University Named
Danielle Laraque-Arena, MD, FAAP, was named as President of the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University. Her appointment begins on January 14, 2016 and she will be the first woman to lead the university. Since 2010, she has served as chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Maimonides Medical Center and vice president of Maimonides Infants and Children’s Hospital of Brooklyn, and she is professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University.
From 2000–2010, Dr. Laraque-Arena was the endowed Debra and Leon Black Professor of Pediatrics and chief of the Division of General Pediatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She also served on the faculty at Columbia University.
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Dr. Laraque-Arena immigrated to the United States in 1962. She earned her MD from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine and completed internship and residency at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, where she was also a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow in General Academic Pediatrics. She is an internationally recognized expert in injury prevention, child abuse, adolescent health risk behaviors, and issues critical to health care delivery in underserved communities. She previously served as a United States Public Health Service Primary Care Policy Fellow, a president of the Academic Pediatric Association, and a member of the National Institute of Mental Health Standing Committee on Interventions for Disorders Involving Children and Their Families. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and a current board member of the AAP.
NIH Names Deputy Director for Extramural Research
Michael S. Lauer, MD, has been named as the new Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has served at the NIH since 2007, when he joined the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) as Director of the Division of Prevention and Population Science. He currently serves as the Director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the NHLBI, a post he has held since 2009.
Dr. Lauer earned his MD from Albany Medical College in 1985. He completed internship and residency in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and was a Clinical Fellow in Medicine (Cardiology) at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He also served as a Research Fellow in the Framingham Heart Study at Boston University Medical School in Framingham, MA. He served at the Cleveland Clinic from 1993–2007. During his tenure there, he held a number of leadership roles and was a Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics at the Clinic's Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University.
Dr. Lauer is a board-certified cardiologist. His areas of research interest include clinical cardiovascular epidemiology, comparative effectiveness, and biostatistics. He is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and an elected fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. He received the Arthur S. Flemming Award for exceptional service in Federal Government in 2012 and was recently named as NIH Co-Chair for the President's Precision Medicine Initiative.
NIMH Director Steps Down
Thomas R. Insel, MD, stepped down as Director for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), effective November 1, 2015. Dr. Insel held the post for 13 years. He first joined the NIMH in 1980, serving in the Division of Intramural Research until 1994. During the time between tenures at the NIMH, Dr. Insel was Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University, where he served as the founding director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience and was director of an NIH-funded Center for Autism Research. From 1994 to 1999, he was Director of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta.
During his career at the NIMH, Dr. Insel has led a number of trans-NIH and HHS efforts. He was chair of the Congressionally established Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) and co-chair of the Blueprint for Neuroscience Research and the NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) program. He served as Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at its founding, until a permanent director was appointed.
A clinical psychologist, Dr. Insel is internationally recognized for his research on the neurobiology of complex social behaviors and as a pioneer in the study of the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in social bonding. He will be joining the Google Life Sciences (GLS) team at Alphabet (formerly Google) to lead a new effort focused on mental health. Bruce Cuthbert, PhD, will serve as Acting Director while a national search is conducted for the new NIMH Director.
IU's Stark Neurosciences Institute Names Director
Bruce T. Lamb, PhD, has been named director of the Stark Neurosciences Research Institute at the Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine. A neuroscientist at Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute, Dr. Lamb is co-director of the Center for Research Excellence in Neurodegeneration at the Cleveland Clinic and a member of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Council for the National Alzheimer's Association. He will join the Stark Institute on Jan. 18, 2016. He succeeds the Center’s founding director, Gerry Oxford, PhD, who is retiring.
Dr. Lamb earned his PhD in molecular biology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. Prior to joining the Cleveland Clinic in 2005, he served on the faculty of the Department of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. His research has focused on the basic disease mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease and his work is funded by numerous research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Alzheimer's Association and other foundations and corporations. Dr. Lamb is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Chair of Urology Appointed at Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Memorial Hospital
Edward M. Schaeffer, MD, PhD, has been named chair of the departments of Urology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Memorial Hospital, effective December 1. Dr. Schaeffer joins Northwestern from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he was the R. Christian B. Evensen Professor of Urology, Oncology and Pathology. He also served as director of the prostate cancer program, director of international urology and co-director of the Prostate Cancer Multidisciplinary Clinic, and was a member of the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute and the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Dr. Schaeffer’s prostate research has focused on at-risk populations, diagnosis, treatment outcomes and the molecular biology of lethal prostate cancer. His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Dr. Schaeffer is also recognized for his clinical expertise in open, laparoscopic and robotic treatment of urologic malignancies, and he is chief medical officer of the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Norway.
Dr. Schaeffer earned his MD and PhD at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed an internship in surgery, a fellowship in pathology and a residency in urology at Johns Hopkins Medicine. He has been a member of the Johns Hopkins faculty since 2007. He has received a number of honors and awards, including the American Urological Association’s Astellas “Rising Star” award and the Howard Hughes Clinician-Scientist Early Careers Award.
Director Named at Center for Clinical Research at SIU Medical School
Joseph Milbrandt, PhD, has been named as the director of the Center for Clinical Research (CCR) at Southern Illinois University (SIU) School of Medicine. Dr. Milbrandt, who served as associate director for the CCR since 2009, joined the faculty at SIU in 2005 as research associate professor in the Department of Surgery. He also served as director of the Surgery Clinical Trials Office and, in 2014, was cross-appointed as a research associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics.
Dr. Milbrandt earned his PhD in pharmacology at SIU School of Medicine in 1995 and completed clinical pharmacology fellowship at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Peoria. Prior to joining the SIU faculty, he was the director of clinical investigation at the Center for Clinical Investigation and Therapeutics at OSF St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria (2000–2005). Dr. Milbrandt has served as principal investigator or co-investigator for numerous clinical research projects. He has been a member of several professional organizations, including the Council of Healthcare Advisors, the Association of Clinical Research Professionals, the Stroke Council of the American Heart Association, the Association for Research in Otolaryngology and the Society for Neuroscience.
Associate Director of Clinical Investigations at UACC Named
Daniel Persky, MD, has been named associate director of clinical investigations and director of the Clinical Trials Office (CTO), at the University of Arizona Cancer Center (UACC). A leader in the field of lymphoma translational research, Dr. Persky serves as an associate professor of medicine at the UA College of Medicine– Tucson. He is a member of the Hodgkin Lymphoma subcommittee of the National Cancer Trials Network and serves as principal investigator on two national clinical trials for aggressive lymphoma.
Dr. Persky earned his MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He completed internship and residency at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in Rochester, MN, and a three-year fellowship in medical oncology and hematology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He joined the UACC in 2006.
Dr. Persky’s research has focused on lymphoid malignancies, including lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He is board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in the subspecialty of medical oncology and is a research member of the Therapeutic Development Program at the UA Cancer Center. He received the SWOG/Hope Foundation Coltman Fellowship in 2010 and the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Clinical Investigator Team Leadership Award in 2014.
Medical Director of Cancer Center Appointed at MU
Eric Tzvi Kimchi, MD, has been appointed chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology at the University of Missouri (MU) School of Medicine and medical director of Ellis Fischel Cancer Center. He will also serve as associate professor in the Department of Surgery. He began serving in these roles on Sept. 1, joining the MU from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston. At MUSC, he was associate professor of surgery, associate program director for the hepato-pancreatobiliary fellowship and chair of the Surgical Quality Council.
A surgical oncologist, Dr. Kimchi’s research has focused on hepatobiliary and pancreatic malignancies and has led to advances in understanding the immune system’s response to liver cancer. He earned his MD from Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and completed residency in general surgery and a research fellowship in thoracic oncology at Wayne State University. He completed a clinical and research fellowship in surgical oncology at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Kimchi previously served as associate professor of surgery at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He recently completed his MBA at The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina in Charleston and is currently treasurer of the Association for Academic Surgery.