HMS Faculty Council Highlights

At the Faculty Council meeting on Dec. 7, Alexa McCray, co-director of the HMS Center for Biomedical Informatics, discussed the changing role of the Countway Library of Medicine, the need to focus on information management, and the most effective use of resources. She identified four core areas to be addressed including the digital library, bioinformatics, clinical information, and outreach and education.

Plans for the library include providing a collaborative environment for the entire HMS community, including researchers, librarians, clinicians, and other professional staff, even those at affiliated institutions who are not currently guaranteed access to Countway resources. The library will serve as a gathering place for students and faculty—a site for symposia, talks, and book signings—as well as providing quiet spaces.

McCray also highlighted other plans to expand electronic access to the biomedical literature, digitize the Warren collection of artifacts of medicine, facilitate translational research, and enhance the entire biomedical literature search process.

Evelynn Hammonds, senior vice provost for faculty development and diversity at Harvard University, provided a summary of her past work, including her role as chair of the Task Force on Women Faculty. She explained that one of her main responsibilities will be to implement the task force’s recommendations. To that end, she will be focusing on oversight structures; data collection, including climate surveys, metrics, and status reports; and faculty recruitment and retention with attention to maternity leave policies, tenure clock extensions, and financial assistance for child care. The first effort will be directed toward junior faculty. If the University is to retain junior faculty, she said, their concerns need to be identified and addressed. She noted that child care issues are among the most important.

Hammonds underscored the need to define an institutionwide consensus regarding the mission and goals of faculty development and diversity, of working together, and of assessing progress regularly.

She also emphasized the role of search committees and the importance of introducing new search committee guidelines that seek out and encourage female and minority candidates.

The issue of current criteria for appointment and promotion was raised at the meeting as well as the need to recognize and reward the clinical investigator/clinical teacher. HMS dean Joseph Martin said that a new task force, chaired by Ellice Lieberman, HMS dean for faculty affairs, is being formed to look at this issue.

Gilmore Takes Helm at Schepens

Michael Gilmore was recently appointed Schepens Eye Research Institute’s new president and CEO. The Charles L. Schepens professor of ophthalmology, Gilmore had been serving as the institute’s acting CEO. Prior to his work at Schepens, Gilmore was the vice president for research at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

Gilmore’s area of special interest has been the molecular pathogenesis of diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant gram positive bacteria, inflammation in the pathogenesis of infectious disease, and new therapies.

“Mike provided fabulous leadership at a critical time for the institute,” said Kennett Burnes, chairman of the Schepens board of trustees and CEO of Cabot Corporation. “He was the right person at the right time, and we now can look forward to his charting an ambitious and successful course for the future.”

Applications Requested for Med Ed Fellowship

The Rabkin Fellowship in Medical Education is accepting applications for its one-year fellowships, which will begin on July 1, 2006. The fellowship aims to help faculty develop their skills as medical educators, allow them to conduct scholarly research in medical education, support them as leaders and agents of change, and create a community of experts who strive to improve medical education. Fellowships are open to faculty with a primary appointment at HMS who currently teach at a Harvard-affiliated institution. The deadline for receipt of applications is Feb. 3, 2006, at 5 p.m. Application materials may be downloaded from the Shapiro Institute for Education and Research website at http://bidmc.harvard.edu/applicationrequest/. For more information, contact Lori Newman at 617-667-4742 or lnewman@bidmc.harvard.edu.

Joint Programs

HMS and Harvard Business School (HBS) celebrated the official start of Harvard University’s joint MD–MBA program this academic year with a special event on the HBS campus. Daniel L. Vasella (left), chairman and CEO of Novartis AG, delivered the evening’s keynote address on the compatibility of business and medicine before an audience that included the first seven students enrolled in the program. Announced last year, the innovative five-year track is designed to foster intellectual integration of the medical and management disciplines by combining the curricula of both the Business and Medical Schools. The HMS portion of the program is housed in the Department of Health Care Policy, headed by Barbara McNeil (right) and directed by Stan Finkelstein, HMS senior lecturer on health care policy.

New Appointments to Full Professor

The following full professorships were announced in November.

Thomas Byrne
Clinical Professor of Neurology and Health Sciences and Technology
Massachusetts General Hospital
Byrne’s principal clinical and research interests include the neurological complications of cancer and anticancer therapies. Most recently, he has studied the intersection of neuroscience and oncology, specifically the mechanisms and prevention of cognitive and other neurological disorders that develop in cancer patients. Byrne is a member of the Pappas Center for Neuro-oncology at MGH and teaches two clinical neuroscience courses at MIT through the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

G. Scott Gazelle
Professor of Radiology
Massachusetts General Hospital
Gazelle’s research focuses on evaluating the benefits, costs, and appropriate use of new medical technologies. He and his group have used the techniques of decision science and computer simulation to evaluate the effectiveness, costs, and cost-effectiveness of diagnostic and treatment interventions for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other diseases. The results of this research have been used to guide decision-making at the individual physician, hospital, and health system level. In addition, Gazelle is director of the MGH Institute for Technology Assessment, the Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Program in Cancer Outcomes Research Training, and the MGH Clinical Research Support Office.

Jill Goldstein
Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
For 20 years, Goldstein has investigated hypotheses regarding the role of a person’s sex in understanding schizophrenia and other major psychiatric disorders. She is particularly interested in fetal antecedents to sex differences in adult onset disorders with fetal origins and the comorbidity between psychiatric and general medical disorders such as cardiovascular disease. Her current studies focus on identifying the role of pre- and peri-natal risk factors in understanding differential brain abnormalities of men and women in adult onset disorders with fetal origins; characterizing the role of gonadal and adrenal hormones in the etiology and functional course of these abnormalities; and better identifying normal sex differences in brain structure and function. She is the director of research at the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology at BWH; her primary appointment is as professor of psychiatry.

In Memoriam

Bradford Cannon, HMS clinical professor emeritus of surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, died on Dec. 20 at the age of 98.

Cannon received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1929 and his MD from HMS in 1933. He rejoined the community as an instructor in surgery at MGH in 1941, where, with the exception of four years spent at Valley Forge General Hospital, he remained until retiring in 1989. He served on the faculty at HMS and was appointed clinical professor emeritus of surgery in 1974. He was MGH ’s first chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery.

Cannon was an innovative plastic surgeon who helped pioneer a new treatment for burns and worked to ensure that plastic surgery would become an established and respected specialty in Boston.

Cannon’s 1940s studies with surgeon Olivia Cope on tannic acid, the period’s most common treatment for burns, demonstrated that the acid was inhibiting healing. Their work changed the way burns were treated.

The pair pioneered a less invasive method that included wrapping burns with a petroleum-coated gauze containing boric acid, a process that became the standard burn treatment. They used this new method on a large scale for the first time in November 1942, when a fire at the Boston nightclub Cocoanut Grove killed almost 500 people and injured hundreds more. One of the fire’s survivors wrote a letter to Cannon, saying, “I realize that medical science contributed much, but I honestly doubt that it would have worked so well without my will to live—and your intelligence to bolster that will. Your compassion, your caring, I believe, did save my life. ”

Cannon went on to serve in the plastic surgery unit at the Valley Forge General Hospital in Pennsylvania from 1943 to 1947 as assistant chief and then as chief. This unit performed more than 15,000 operations without a single fatality.

In the 1950s, Cannon also worked as a consultant for the Atomic Energy Commission and visited the Marshall Islands to study effects on the population of radioactivity from atomic tests.

Cannon is survived by three sons, a daughter, 14 grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.

Chiu-Chen Wang, professor emeritus of radiation oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital, died on Dec. 14, at the age of 83.

Wang joined the HMS community as a resident at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1950, where he remained for five decades. He was appointed a full professor of radiation therapy in 1975 and a professor of radiation oncology in 1982. In 1993, he was named professor emeritus of radiation oncology.

In his area of specialty, cancer of the head and neck, Wang “was probably the top person in the world in treatment,” said Jay Loeffler, the Herman and Joan Suit professor of radiation oncology and chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology at MGH. According to Loeffler, Wang possessed an impressive ability to determine the exact intensity of radiation needed to irradiate the cancer long before technology made this easier.

During his years at the hospital, Wang treated thousands of patients, enhancing and saving countless lives. Wang was honored at a recent ceremony held at HMS when Nancy Tarbell became the first incumbent of the newly established C.C. Wang, MD, professorship in radiation oncology at HMS and MGH.

Wang is survived by his daughter, Janice Wang Smyth; brothers George Wang, Marin Wang, and Chiu-Kwong Wang; and sisters Ya-Li Pan and So-Ying Bai.

Film Uses Tour de France as Vehicle for Touring Brain

Photo courtesy of Partners Healthcare Systems, Wired to Win Baden Cooke and Jimmy Casper

Last summer viewers around the world watched as cyclists pushed themselves on the grueling Tour de France. The men competing were the world’s most accomplished cyclists, yet it was their brains as well as their legs that determined how they were to fare in the race. In Wired to Win: Surviving the Tour de France, a film that premiered at the Museum of Science’s IMAX theater in December, scientists from HMS and its affiliates use the competition to discuss the brain, its responses to competition and danger, and its processing of visual and auditory stimuli. Produced by Partners Healthcare, the film follows the efforts of teammates Baden Cooke and Jimmy Casper during the Tour. The team of scientific advisers on the project included Bruce M. Cohen, HMS professor of psychiatry and head of the Department of Psychiatry at McLean Hospital; Matthew Frosch, HMS assistant professor of pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital; Gary Gottlieb, HMS professor of psychiatry and president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Martin Samuels, HMS professor of neurology and head of the BWH Department of Neurology; and Dennis Selkoe, the Vincent and Stella Coates professor of neurologic diseases and co-director of the Center for Neurologic Diseases at BWH.

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