BULLETIN

Appointments to Full Professor

The following HMS faculty members were promoted to full professorships in March.

William Aird
Professor of Medicine
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Aird, chief of the Division of Molecular and Vascular Medicine and director of the Center for Vascular Biology Research at BID, has devoted most of his career to promoting an awareness of the endothelium as a systemically distributed organ. He has employed a highly integrative and interdisciplinary approach to develop the field of endothelial biomedicine. His research has centered on the proximate and evolutionary mechanisms of endothelial cell heterogeneity, with the goal of understanding the pathophysiology and therapeutic potential of vascular bed–specific diseases.

Christiane Ferran
Professor of Surgery
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Ferran’s research focuses on the study of homeostatic and anti-inflammatory genes, such as A20/tnfaip3, in different cell types and organs, their relationship to the pathophysiology of disease and their potential diagnostic and therapeutic use in atherosclerosis and other vascular diseases, organ transplantation, diabetes and liver diseases. Other areas of research include the study of the immunomodulatory functions of homeostatic proteins in the context of allograft rejection and autoimmune diseases.  She has collaborated with many other investigators in both basic and clinical research. In addition to her endeavors in basic and translational research, Ferran mentors surgical residents and junior investigators at BID.

Gregory Fricchione
Professor of Psychiatry
Massachusetts General Hospital
Fricchione’s research focuses on psychosomatic medicine and the interface of mind, brain and body. Recently he has been supervising research that explores the risk of future cardiac events conferred by depression in patients soon after myocardial infarction, as well as the benefits of screening and early intervention. In the past he has collaborated in basic research on the role of nitric oxide in macrophage behavior. As director of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at MGH, he has organized a research agenda on the importance of the relationship between stress and resiliency for the propensity to health and disease using an animal model, neuroimaging and gene expression profiling in clinical studies. His clinical work has centered on novel treatment for the catatonic syndrome.

Allan Ropper
Professor of Neurology
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Ropper is a clinical neurologist and teacher who was an originator of the field of neurological intensive care. He is an author of four editions of Adams and Victor’s Principles of Neurology, the major textbook in the field; editor of the main monograph on neurological intensive care; and associate editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. He publishes extensively from his clinical experience on coma, Guillain–Barre syndrome and related subjects. His current research is on VEGF gene transfer for the treatment of neuropathy. He is executive vice chair of the Department of Neurology at BWH, where he also works as a neurointensivist in coma cases, a general neurologist and a teacher.

Shapiro Institute Announces New Rabkin Fellows

The Shapiro Institute for Education and Research at HMS and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has named the 2009–2010 Rabkin Fellows in Medical Education. They are Dara Brodsky, assistant professor of pediatrics at BID; Sidhu Gangadharan, instructor in surgery at BID; Vicki Jackson, instructor in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital; John Mitchell, instructor in anesthesia at BID; Christiana Russ, instructor in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston; and Wendy Stead, instructor in medicine at BID. The Rabkin Fellowship was established in 1998 to provide HMS faculty with dedicated time to develop the expertise and skills needed to launch or advance academic careers in medical education or academic administration.

Honors and Advances

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has named Michael Greenberg, the Nathan Marsh Pusey professor of neurobiology at HMS and head of that department, as the recipient of the Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize. The Perl Prize recognizes a seminal achievement in neuroscience and was awarded to Greenberg for his discovery of signaling pathways underlying activity-regulated gene transcription in neurons.

Judge Baker Children’s Center has named a new chief operating officer. Stephen Schaffer will join Judge Baker this month after serving as president of the Salem-based Children’s Friend and Family Service for 17 years. As COO, Schaffer will have oversight of the center’s programs and administrative functions, and he will also work closely with the center’s president and board of trustees to advance the strategic direction of the organization.

Brett Simon has joined Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center as chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care and Pain Medicine. He comes from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, where he has spent the past 17 years. In the clinic, Simon works with patients undergoing major abdominal, vascular, transplant and thoracic surgery, and in the lab he focuses on functional lung imaging, lung mechanics and acute lung injury.

In Memoriam

Daniel C. Tosteson (continue to next page)

top