New Lectureship Joins Diversity Award Ceremony
The inaugural Howard, Dorsey, Still Lecture and the 2008 Diversity Awards ceremony will take place Wednesday, March 11, from 12 to 2:30 pm in the Benjamin Waterhouse Room of Gordon Hall. A reception will follow.
The Howard, Dorsey, Still Lecture is named for the first three African Americans to graduate from HMS—Edwin Howard (1869), Thomas Dorsey (1869) and James Still (1871)—and features speakers who have made significant contributions to advancing the nation’s health. This year’s speaker is Neil Powe, professor of medicine and epidemiology, the James F. Fries Distinguished Service Professor, and director of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Johns Hopkins University.
The recipients of the 2008 Harold Amos Faculty Diversity Award are Barbara Bierer, HMS professor of medicine (pediatrics) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Karen Emmons, HSPH professor of society, human development and health and deputy director of the Center for Community-based Research at Dana–Farber Cancer Institute; Alexander Green, HMS instructor in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital; Harvey Makadon, HMS clinical professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; and Jennifer Potter, HMS associate professor of medicine at BID. The recipient of the Sharon P. Clayborne Staff Diversity Award is Ricardo Espada, an HMS IT support associate.
Proposals Sought in Psychobiology ResearchThe Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is seeking proposals for the Dr. Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation Scholars Programme in Psychobiology. The foundation provides living stipends or research expenses for scholars conducting psychobiological studies of direct relevance to human clinical problems. PhD students in psychology and medical sciences who are engaged in their dissertation research and currently in the second, third or fourth year are eligible. Candidates for living stipends must not be getting other funding such as GSAS Dissertation Completion Fellowships. MD candidates in the Medical School and recent terminal-degree recipients working in psychobiology are also eligible. Total awards in any year are limited by the income of the fund and are increasingly competitive. Faculty may sponsor more than one person; however, they must provide a rank order list to the committee.
Nominees should provide the following: a letter of recommendation from their faculty adviser, the nominee’s curriculum vitae and a two-page description of the research project with an attached budget. Nomination packets are due Friday, March 27. Please submit your nomination packets electronically to Joan Smeltzer at smeltzer@wjh.harvard.edu. For more information, contact Susan Kany at 617-495-3909 or skany@wjh.harvard.edu.
Recent Appointments to Full ProfessorThe following faculty members were appointed to full professorships in January.
Roland Baron
Professor of Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital
Baron’s research focuses on the cellular and molecular biology of bone cells in the context of skeletal development and bone homeostasis and diseases. His interests include translational medicine and preclinical and clinical development, particularly in the field of osteoporosis and joint diseases such as osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Baron is also professor of oral medicine, infection and immunity at HSDM and chair of that department.
Stephen Blacklow
Professor of Pathology
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Blacklow’s laboratory has focused on the relationship between structure and function in proteins of the LDL receptor family and in human Notch receptors. Ongoing research on the Notch signaling pathway emphasizes biochemical and structural approaches to uncover mechanistic principles that underlie normal and pathogenic signaling. Blacklow also serves as director of the MD–PhD Program in the Basic Sciences at HMS.
David Diamond
Professor of Surgery
Children’s Hospital Boston
Diamond’s research interests are in three areas. He has been involved in a variety of clinical studies related to understanding the adolescent varicocele. He has been involved in the clinical study of disorders of sexual differentiation and is co-director of the Gender Management Service (GeMS) at Children’s Hospital. As a clinical ethicist at Children’s, he has also studied the ethical issues related to disorders of sexual differentiation, gender assignment in particular.
Charles Nelson III
Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry
Children’s Hospital Boston
Nelson’s research focuses on two areas: the effects of early experience on brain development and the development and neural bases of face and emotion processing. His work entails studying typically developing children and those at risk for atypical development because of early biological or psychosocial adversity. He is also a professor of pediatrics at Children’s.
Richard Stone
Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Dana–Farber Cancer Institute
Stone is director of the Leukemia Program at Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, associate director of the Dana–Farber Partners Cancer Care Fellowship Program, and vice chair of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B Leukemia Committee. His primary focus is clinical and translational research dedicated to developing effective and safe targeted therapies for patients with leukemia and related disorders, with a special emphasis on tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Stone is currently directing trials that employ inhibitors of the pathophysiologically relevant mutant FLT3 tyrosine kinase, in combination with chemotherapy, in newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia patients and in combination with an AKT pathway inhibitor in advanced patients.
Jonathan Tilly
Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology
Massachusetts General Hospital
For more than 20 years, Tilly has focused his research on ovarian biology, with a particular emphasis on the mechanisms involved in establishing and depleting the oocyte (egg cell) reserve. Among other achievements, his work has led to preclinical testing of a novel fertility preservation strategy designed to protect the ovaries in situ from damage caused by anticancer therapies, characterization of the aging process in a genetically engineered “no-menopause” animal model, and the discovery that adult ovaries in mammals retain the capacity to generate new oocytes. Much of his current work focuses on the molecular mechanisms that control the activity of the putative stem cells responsible for sustaining oocyte production during adulthood, and how this information can be used to delay or prevent ovarian failure under normal and pathological situations.
In a letter to the community, Dean Jeffrey Flier announced that Jim Yong Kim, chair of the HMS Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, will be leaving HMS to become president of Dartmouth College as of July 1. Flier expressed sadness over Kim’s departure, but added, “We are very proud that Jim has been chosen for this important position in American education. Dartmouth could not be welcoming a finer president.”
Kim has held many leadership positions locally and internationally. In addition to serving as HMS professor of global health and social medicine, HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the François-Xavier Bagnoud professor of health and human rights at HSPH, Kim is chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at BWH and director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. During a leave of absence from Harvard, Kim served as director of the HIV/AIDS department at the World Health Organization (WHO), following his service as adviser to the WHO director-general. He also was a founding trustee and executive director of Partners In Health, a nonprofit organization that supports a range of health programs in poor communities in the United States and around the world. An expert in tuberculosis, Kim has been a member or chair of several committees on international TB policy and has conducted extensive research into effective and affordable strategies for treating drug-resitant strains of TB. As president of Dartmouth, Kim will be the first Asian American to head an Ivy League school.
Virologist Named to AAASThe American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has named Martin Hirsch, HMS professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, as one of 584 new fellows. The new fellows, who were selected for their efforts in advancing scientifically or socially distinguished science applications, were presented with certificates at the AAAS annual meeting in Chicago last month. Hirsch, who is also an HSPH professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, was selected for distinguished contributions to the field of medical virology and infectious diseases, particularly in the development of effective combination therapies for HIV infections.
