HMS, HSPH Faculty Elected to IOM
Two HMS and two HSPH faculty members were among the 65 new members and five foreign associates elected to the Institute of Medicine for 2008. The IOM, part of the National Academy of Sciences, is an advisory group that completes studies, issues reports, and provides analysis on health policy issues.
Phyllis Kanki
Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, HSPH
Kanki’s description of a human virus related to simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in healthy West African individuals led to a research collaboration lasting more than 20 years with Senegalese scientists on the natural history of HIV-2, determinants of pathogenesis, and protection and interaction with new HIV-1 virus variants. In addition, she has coupled her research and international training efforts with public health initiatives for HIV prevention and treatment. She directs the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria, established by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Harvard PEPFAR program.
Raju Kucherlapati
Paul C. Cabot Professor of Genetics
Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Kucherlapati’s lab has been involved in the mapping and sequencing of human and mouse genomes using yeast artificial chromosomes and bacterial artificial chromosomes. In collaboration with the Genome Center at Baylor College of Medicine, his group sequenced human chromosome 12 and was involved in mapping and cloning several human disease genes on this chromosome, including Noonan syndrome, Darier disease, Cornea plana, and Holt–Oram syndrome. His lab has created mouse models of the disease VCFS/DGS and of gastrointestinal cancer. They are also working to identify how many patients with Noonan syndrome, with a Noonan-like syndrome, or with isolated pulmonary valve disease or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy have a mutation in the PTPN11 gene. Kucherlapati is the scientific director of the HMS–Partners HealthCare Center for Genetics and Genomics.
Marsha Moses
Professor of Surgery, Children’s Hospital Boston
In her research, Moses focuses on the biochemical and molecular regulation of angiogenesis, particularly during early tumor establishment, progression, and metastasis. She has discovered and characterized several endogenous angiogenesis inhibitors and established the mechanism of action for a subset of these. The Moses lab is also working to identify the molecular determinants underlying the switch to the angiogenic phenotype during early tumor development. To complement these studies, some years ago she established a proteomics initiative in her laboratory that has led to the discovery and validation of a panel of urinary cancer biomarkers that predict disease status and stage in cancer patients and are sensitive and specific predictors of disease progression and therapeutic efficacy.
Louise Ryan
Chair of the Department of Biostatistics, HSPH
Ryan works on statistical methods related to environmental risk assessment for cancer, developmental and reproductive toxicity, and other adverse health effects. She has been involved in evaluations by the National Academy of Sciences of several high-profile environmental issues, including risks associated with arsenic and drinking water as well as methylmercury. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and is an advocate for diversity in higher education.
Gina Vild, director of marketing and communications for cancer and women’s health at Massachusetts General Hospital, has been appointed the new associate dean for public affairs at HMS, effective Nov. 17. She succeeds Robert Neal, who has served as acting associate dean of the department since February.
Vild comes to HMS with more than 20 years of experience in public affairs, marketing communications, and government relations. She has particular expertise in positioning organizations through data-driven planning, media relations, web-focused marketing, and internal and external communications. She also brings with her a wealth of knowledge in crisis and issue management.
In her current position, Vild has been recognized for crafting research-based strategies that have contributed to increased growth and recognition for the MGH Cancer Center. She has been responsible for strengthening and extending the Cancer Center community through enhanced internal communications and the development of publications and web strategies that support patients, physicians, researchers, and donors. She was also a core member of the MGH Web Redesign Planning Group.
Vild previously served as director of public affairs for Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund and has consulted for MIT and Deaconess Hospital and their network affiliates, as well as Lahey Clinic and the University of Chicago Medical Center.
The following HMS and HSPH faculty were appointed to full and named professorships in June and July.
Joel Bass
Clinical Professor of Pediatrics
Massachusetts General Hospital
Bass is a community hospital-based academic general pediatrician and has focused his research on a wide variety of clinical issues. He has performed nationally recognized injury prevention research including the development of the Framingham Safety Surveys, an injury prevention counseling tool for primary care settings that has been adopted by The Injury Prevention Program (TIPP) of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He has also been involved in research studies on the incidence of oxygen desaturation of both preterm and term newborns in car seats and published a systematic review on the impact of subacute and chronic hypoxia on cognition in children.
David DeMaso
Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics
Children’s Hospital Boston
DeMaso’s clinical research focuses on the responses of children and their families to the psychological stresses associated with chronic physical illness, especially cardiac disease. He also investigates and assesses issues in the practice of pediatric psychosomatic medicine, such as those surrounding support staff, care of children in the ICU, and other difficult situations, and in the uses of newer technologies to communicate with families. He has developed the Experience Journal (www.experiencejournal.com), an innovative computer-based intervention that uses the reflections of children, parents, and healthcare-givers on the experience of different physical and emotional illnesses.
Elizabeth Engle
Professor of Neurology and Ophthalmology
Children’s Hospital Boston
Engle, who in addition to her HMS appointments is also a Howard Hughes investigator, focuses on uncovering the genetic and neurodevelopmental causes of congenital eye movement disorders and disorders of cranial motor neurons and nerve development. Toward these goals, she collaborates with clinicians worldwide to define the phenotypes of individuals affected by Mendelian disorders and uses genetic techniques to map and identify the mutated genes. Her team then models these disorders in mice and other organisms to uncover the roles these genes play in normal and abnormal neural development. Her team is also pursuing the genetics of common forms of strabismus such as esotropia.
Garrett Fitzmaurice
Professor of Psychiatry
McLean Hospital
Fitzmaurice is a leading academic biostatistician whose principal achievements in statistical research have been to develop methodology for longitudinal analysis, missing data, and psychiatric epidemiology. Fitzmaurice is internationally recognized for his research on statistical methods for analyzing longitudinal data. His research on longitudinal analysis is complemented by his research on methods for handling missing data, a problem that is more pervasive in longitudinal study designs.
Matthew Gillman
Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention
Harvard Medical School
Gillman applies epidemiologic approaches to studying developmental origins of health and disease, focusing the long-term effects on child and adult health outcomes due to influences that occur during early, plastic periods of human development. He is particularly interested in pre- and peri-natal determinants of obesity and its cardiometabolic consequences and in developmental approaches to preventing these common chronic conditions.
Russ Hauser
Professor of Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology
Harvard School of Public Health
Hauser’s research interests are in the field of reproductive and developmental epidemiology. His research focuses on the impact of environmental and occupational chemicals on fertility and pregnancy. He is currently conducting an NIH-funded study on the effects of chemicals classified as endocrine disruptors on male and female reproductive health. Hauser is also conducting a prospective cohort study on children in Chapaevsk, Russia, where he is investigating the relationship of exposure to dioxins and dioxinlike compounds with growth and pubertal development. Other research activities include studying the relationship between maternal exposure to phthalates and fetal growth and placental function.
Frank Hu
Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology
Harvard School of Public Health
Hu’s research focuses on diet and lifestyle determinants of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. His research has demonstrated that the vast majority of type 2 diabetes is preventable through diet and lifestyle modifications, and his lab’s findings have contributed to current public health recommendations and policies for prevention of chronic disease. His current research has expanded to investigate complex interactions among nutrition, biomarkers, and genetic factors in the development of diabetes and cardiovascular complications. Hu is also collaborating with researchers from China to study obesity, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease in Chinese populations.
David Kuter
Professor of Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital
Kuter has devoted the past 25 years to the study of the regulation of platelet production. He was one of the researchers who discovered the platelet-regulating protein thrombopoietin. He has gone on to conduct the pivotal clinical trials of thrombopoietin in immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), which have led to the recent FDA approval of this new drug. At MGH he continues to conduct both basic and clinical investigation of disorders of platelet production. He also directs the hospital’s clinical training program in hematology and leads the 080 Hematology Course in the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.
Howard Libman
Professor of Medicine
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Libman’s career has focused on providing care for HIV-infected patients and educating clinicians about this disease. He is editor of the textbook HIV, whose third edition was published last year by the American College of Physicians. He is also a member of the national expert panel on HIV primary care of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. In addition, Libman directs the HMS AIDS Initiative in Vietnam, which trains Vietnamese clinicians in HIV care, and is clinical director of the New England AIDS Education and Training Center.
Chensheng (Alex) Lu
Mark and Catherine Winkler Assistant Professor of Environmental Exposure Biology
Harvard School of Public Health
Lu’s interests focus on the assessment of pesticide exposure resulting from indoor applications, agricultural spray drift, parental occupation, or dietary intake. His research projects have included using saliva samples as an alternative for biological monitoring, using Global Position Systems to assess children’s time-and-location in relation to their pesticide exposure, and assessing urban and suburban children’s long-term exposure to pesticides.
Michelle Mello
Professor of Law and Public Health
Harvard School of Public Health
Mello conducts empirical research into issues at the intersection of law, ethics, and health policy. She is the author of more than 70 articles and book chapters on the medical malpractice system, medical errors and patient safety, research ethics, mass tort litigation, the obesity epidemic, pharmaceuticals, clinical ethics, and other topics. Current and recent projects include an investigation of the impact of the medical malpractice crisis on physician supply in Pennsylvania, a study of factors contributing to medical errors in the hospital, a study of legal relationships between academic investigators and industry sponsors of clinical trials, and a feasibility study of an administrative “no-fault” system of compensating medical injuries.
Leonard Rappaport
Professor of Pediatrics
Children’s Hospital Boston
Rappaport’s research has focused on improving the developmental outcomes of children with medical and surgical issues, focusing primarily on a series of multidisciplinary collaborative randomized clinical trials in newborn cardiac surgery. Recently he has led an effort to draw together leading researchers in genomics, cognitive neuroscience, and medical informatics to help improve our understanding of autism spectrum disorders and eventually develop novel molecular-based diagnostic methods and therapies to complement current behavioral interventions.
Andrew Rosenberg
Professor of Pathology
Massachusetts General Hospital
Rosenberg’s clinical work concentrates on diagnostic surgical pathology of diseases of the musculoskeletal system. His research interests complement this work and the majority of his investigations have been clinicopathologic studies that have utilized state of the art diagnostic modalities to increase the understanding of diseases and neoplasms, and identify new entities. Currently, his research effort is expanding into the field of molecular genetics of bone and soft tissue tumors. Some of this work has been in collaboration with the MGH Departments of Orthopedics, Radiation Oncology, Medical Oncology, and Radiology.
Eric Rubin
Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases
Harvard School of Public Health
Rubin’s lab has developed new tools for studying Mycobacterium tuberculosis and related mycobacteria in an effort to identify genes required for growth, survival, and virulence in mycobacteria. They are taking advantage of the recent sequencing of the M. tuberculosis genome to systematically analyze genes to determine their importance in disease using transposon mutagenesis and DNA microarrays. Rubin and his colleagues hope to use these genes to develop new methods to produce attenuated strains of M. tuberculosis for use as vaccines and as screening strains for new antibiotics.
Mark Schuster
Professor of Pediatrics
Children’s Hospital Boston
Schuster recently joined CHB as chief of general pediatrics and vice chair for health policy research in the Department of Medicine, after serving as director of health promotion and disease prevention at the policy think tank RAND. He leads federally funded studies on school strategies to prevent youth obesity, on the impact of paid family leave on parents of chronically ill children, on a worksite intervention to help parents promote adolescent sexual health, on challenges faced by children with HIV-infected parents, and on family and community factors that influence youth substance use, injuries, physical activity, and other health issues. He also studies the delivery of preventive care and quality of health care.
David Soybel
Professor of Surgery
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Soybel’s clinical expertise is in surgical approaches to diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. From 1994 until 2005, he directed the core and elective surgery student clerkships at the Brigham and received two faculty awards from HMS (1996, 2004) for teaching excellence. He continues to direct an elective course for fourth-year students in general and gastrointestinal surgery. His research addresses disturbances in mucosal function in stomach and colon during inflammation and severe surgical stress. His current projects focus on the role of soft metal cations, such as Zn2+, in the regulation of secretory function in the GI tract and as intracellular signals of oxidative stress.
At the first HMS student research open house held earlier this month, first-year medical students met with faculty from HMS-affiliated teaching hospitals to explore the range of research opportunities available to them. Above, Elizabeth Chao and HMS instructor in surgery Michael Rogers discuss the Children’s Hospital vascular biology program—Chao is interested in angiogenesis and is looking for a summer laboratory assignment that could serve as the basis for her scholarly project. Beginning in 2010, all HMS students will be required to complete one of these research projects.
Honors and AdvancesRobert Blendon, HSPH professor of health policy and political analysis in the Department of Health Policy and Management, has received the 2008 Warren J. Mitofsky Award for Excellence in Public Opinion Research. The award recognizes Blendon’s pioneering use of public opinion data to better understand health care problems and craft more effective policy solutions. He will receive the award at a dinner in November in Washington, D.C.
Leon Eisenberg, the Maude and Lillian Presley professor emeritus of Social Medicine at HMS, received the Juan José López Ibor Award from the World Psychiatric Association. The award was created by The Juan José López-Ibor Foundation in order to recognize and honor individuals or institutions that make significant scientific contributions leading to a better understanding of psychiatric diseases while working to enhance the human dignity of patients and their families. The award consists of a diploma, a token, and 40,000 Euros for the awardee and an institution of the awardee’s choosing.
Klaus Rajewsky, the Fred S. Rosen professor of pediatrics at HMS and the Immune Disease Institute, received the 2008 Ernst Schering Prize for his pioneering work in the area of B cell biology. He has significantly contributed to our understanding of B lymphocytes as well as the development of certain lymphatic cancers. The award of 50,000 Euros was presented at a ceremony in Berlin.
Researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to map the epigenomes of a variety of cell types, including human embryonic stem cells. The five-year grant, part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, totals approximately $15 million. It designates the institute as one of four Reference Epigenome Mapping Centers (REMCs) in the United States that aim to transform the understanding of the code of epigenetic cues that specifies when and where in the body genes are made active. To systematically decipher and analyze these controls, researchers from across the Harvard and MIT communities will come together to study at least 100 distinct types of human cell using the latest methods in stem cell biology, genomics, technology, computation, and production-scale research.
“Epigenomics lies at a key intersection point between genome biology and human disease,” said Bradley Bernstein, a co-principal investigator, a Broad Institute associate member, and HMS assistant professor of pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital. “By glimpsing the normal epigenome at unprecedented breadth and depth, we will lay the critical groundwork for future insights into the epigenetic basis of a variety of diseases, including cancers.”
The REMC at the Broad will help create comprehensive, genome-scale maps of the epigenomes of a variety of cells, including human embryonic stem cells, various adult stem cells, and other key cell types. The researchers will survey both the DNA backbone and its accompanying histone proteins for chemical modifications using high-throughput bisulfite sequencing and ChIP-Seq, respectively.
Emmanuel College has launched a new Graduate Certificate in Research Administration program. The six-course, 18-credit program provides the opportunity for professionals who administer sponsored research programs at colleges, universities, and hospitals to earn an academic credential and expand their professional networks. The program’s curriculum was created as a partnership between Emmanuel College full-time faculty and sponsored-research practitioners from the neighboring Longwood Medical and Academic Area and other institutions, including several Harvard schools, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, and Partners HealthCare.
Using studies, guest speakers and instructional technology platforms, the program’s interactive sessions incorporate the critical facets of sponsored-research administration, and include grant negotiations, pre- and post-awards, contract management, compliance, finance, and ethical considerations. Additionally, students who complete the Graduate Certificate in Research Administration may continue on to the Master of Science in Management program with a specialization in research administration by completing only six additional graduate courses.
For more information on Emmanuel College’s Graduate Certificate in Research Administration, visit www.emmanuel.edu and click on “Graduate & Professional Programs.”
