Harvard University has established the Department of Developmental and Regenerative Biology, the first in the University’s 371-year history to be based in more than one school. Faculty will come from both HMS and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The department eventually will be located in the new Allston science facility, expected to be completed in about two years. But it begins operating now with faculty dispersed at FAS, HMS, and HMS-affiliated hospitals; some members will remain at the hospitals even after the Allston campus is opened, and some may ultimately split their labs between a hospital and Allston.
David Scadden, the Gerald and Darlene Jordan professor of medicine at HMS and Massachusetts General Hospital, and Doug Melton, the Cabot professor of the natural sciences at FAS, will head the new department. Scadden and Melton are also the founding co-directors of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, which they say will be complemented and strengthened by the new academic organization. The department will initially have 13 to 16 members, with a search under way for three new junior faculty hires.
HMS dean Joseph Martin commented on the new opportunities that institutionalized collaborations may bring. “Over the past decade,” he said, “the Medical School has developed many strong collaborations with our hospitals and with faculty at FAS, the School of Public Health, and with other Harvard faculties, but this new initiative, with its status as a full-fledged department, will have academic opportunities that are unprecedented in terms of appointments and options for creating learning opportunities.”
“Creating this department clearly signals that Harvard is going to be bold and is going to lead in forging new connections between basic science and human health,” said Scadden. “The department will combine the highly dynamic areas of developmental biology and stem cell biology and link them to human biology so richly studied by the Medical School and affiliated hospitals.”
He explained that the department can “create exciting and unique educational opportunities for students at all levels by bringing these worlds together. Placing it in Allston will create an organizing hub to bring together the medical and Cambridge campuses. It is an experiment. If successful, it may transform the University.”
Elaborating on education, Scadden said that the new department is asking faculty members to make a commitment to teaching. It will also enable undergraduates to have greater contact with human biology, something they have wanted for a long time.
He added that he is “delighted and honored to be a part of it and can think of no better person with whom to work to create the new culture and new structure that the department represents than Doug Melton.”
The Division of Medical Sciences will offer a new graduate program in Human Biology and Translational Medicine (HBTM) beginning in the fall of 2008. The program will be under the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) umbrella and will be headed by Thomas Michel, an HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a member of the BBS faculty. The program will be taught by faculty from the Quad, affiliated hospitals, and Harvard University.
The curriculum for the new course of study will focus on training students in the fundamental mechanisms and essential methodologies of human biology and disease-oriented research. Six BBS graduate students will be admitted to the program each year. HBTM will also connect graduate students and clinical trainees to programs across Harvard for further translational-medicine training in multiple departments and disciplines.
Below are faculty appointed to professorships in January and February.
Kenneth Bloch
Professor of Anesthesiology
Massachusetts General Hospital
Bloch’s research centers on the role of nitric oxide signaling in the heart and the pulmonary vasculature with a particular emphasis on the therapeutic applications of inhaled nitric oxide. His other areas of interest include studies of the role of bone morphogenetic proteins in cardiovascular development and in the pathogenesis of pulmonary arterial hypertension.
Danesh Moazed
Professor of Cell Biology
Harvard Medical School
In his research, Moazed focuses on understanding how RNA- and protein-based epigenetic mechanisms regulate gene expression and chromatin structure.
David Van Vactor
Professor of Cell Biology
Harvard Medical School
Van Vactor’s research interests lie in the mechanisms that allow neurons to find their partners and construct synaptic connections during nervous system development. Using Drosophila as a model, his lab explores the molecules that control axon guidance, synaptic target recognition, and synapse morphogenesis.
Thomas Vander Salm
Clinical Professor of Surgery
Massachusetts General Hospital
For the past four years, Vander Salm has helped build a new cardiac surgery program at the North Shore Medical Center. The program keeps patients in the same room with the same nurses for their entire stay and places a great emphasis on family involvement in the patient’s care. The patient is visited daily by a dietician, chaplain, respiratory therapist, exercise physiologist, pharmacist, nurse, and physician assistant.
Thomas Walz
Professor of Cell Biology
Harvard Medical School
The Walz group uses high-resolution electron microscopy combined with digital-image processing to determine protein structures. In particular, electron crystallography is used to solve the structure of integral membrane proteins and single-particle electron microscopy to visualize the structures of macromolecular complexes. Major research interests in the Walz group concern membrane transporters for neutral solutes, such as aquaporins and urea transporters, cell surface receptors, and chromatin remodeling complexes. The group also engages in collaborations with a variety of scientific investigators in structural biology and cell biology.
Kai Wucherpfennig
Professor of Neurology
Dana–Farber Cancer Institute
Wucherpfennig is interested in the pathogenesis of T cell–mediated autoimmune diseases, in particular multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes. His lab has defined the structural basis for self-peptide recognition by autoreactive T cell receptors and identified mechanisms for the activation of such T cells by microbial proteins.
The 2007 Dunham Lecture Series, titled “Innate Immunity in Mammals,” will be given by Shizuo Akira, a professor at the Research Institute for Microbial Diseases at Osaka University in Japan. The series was founded in 1923 as the Edward K. Dunham Lectureship for the Promotion of Medical Sciences by Mary Dows Dunham in memory of her husband. The lectures are intended to bring together the HMS community and investigators and educators from around the world who are contributing to the advancement of medical science. The lectures are free and open to the HMS community.
April 24, 3:30–5 p.m. Welcome Reception, 3:30 p.m.
Pathogen Recognition by Toll-like Receptors, 4–5 p.m.
NRB, Amphitheater
April 25, 3–4 p.m. Toll-like Receptor Signaling
Armenise Building, Amphitheater
April 26, 3–4 p.m. Antiviral Response by Innate Immunity
Armenise Building, Amphitheater
HMS, again, was ranked first in the research medical schools category of U.S. News and World Report’s annual graduate school rankings. The School moved from 25 in the previous year’s ranking to 13 in the category of primary care medical schools. In specialty MD programs, HMS came in second in HIV/AIDS, up from third; dropped one place to second in pediatrics; and remained first in women’s health and third in drug/alcohol abuse. In PhD programs, Harvard University dropped from second to fourth in the biological sciences, but did well in the specialty PhD rankings. HU remained first in the areas of biochemistry/biophysics/structural biology, cell biology, immunology/infectious disease, molecular biology, and neuroscience/neurobiology; moved up from third to second in ecology/evolutionary biology; and moved from second to first in microbiology. In genetics/genomics/bioinformatics, HU dropped from first to third.
Delores Brown Award Nominations Sought
The Office of Human Resources is seeking nominations of staff assistants, executive assistants, and coordinators for the 2007 Delores J. Brown Award. The prize, established in 2001 by Brown’s family, honors her as a longtime assistant to Dean Daniel Tosteston. The award recognizes exceptional staff members who embody the spirit and commitment that Brown had for the School.
The nomination form can be found at the HR eCommons page by clicking on the “Rewards and Recognition” link in the bottom right corner. The completed form can be e-mailed to rewards@hms.harvard.edu, faxed to 617-432-3280, or mailed to Rewards, Office of Human Resources, Gordon Hall, Rm. 010. Nominations are due April 27. Nominees must have an HMS or HSDM affiliation and be an overtime-eligible staff member working directly for HMS or HSDM.
Tuesday, May 4
New Research Building Amphitheater
Introductory Remarks, 10 a.m.
James Kasser, CH
Session I: Skeletal Tissue Biology and Physiology, 10:20 a.m.–12 p.m.
Barbara Boyan, Georgia Institute of Technology; Adele Boskey, Hospital for Special Surgery; Arnold Caplan, Case Western Reserve University; Louis Gerstenfeld, Boston University; Stephen Krane, MGH; Hari Reddi, University of California Davis
Session II: Skeletal Tissue Structure and Function, 1–3 p.m.
Marcel Nimni, University of Southern California; Christian Rey, Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, France; Jerome Ackerman, MGH; Christian Burger, State University of New York Stony Brook; David Eyre, University of Washington; Alan Grodzinsky, MIT; William Landis, Northeastern Ohio University; Arthur Veis, Northwestern University
Session III: Skeletal Tissue Molecular Biology and Genetics, 3:30–5:30 p.m.
Roland Baron, Yale University; Julie Glowacki, BWH; Laurie Glimcher, HSPH; Gerard Karsenty, Columbia University; Henry Kronenberg, MGH; Jane Lian, University of Massachusetts; Bjorn Olsen, HSDM; Matthew Warman, CH
The Alzheimer’s Association has named Rudolph Tanzi, HMS professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, the winner of the 2007 Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute Award for his contributions to Alzheimer’s research. Tanzi received the award on March 27 at the National Alzheimer’s Gala in Washington, D.C.
News BriefHMS first-year student Scott Lee is among 31 Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellows for 2007. The fellowships are given to naturalized citizens, resident aliens, and the children of naturalized citizens to help prepare them for leadership opportunities in a variety of fields. The fellowship provides half tuition for a maximum of two years of graduate study in the United States and a maintenance grant of $20,000 per year. Lee, who came to the United States from Korea with his parents when he was 9 months old, received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University. He has interned with the World Health Organization and Partners In Health and has recently cofounded a nonprofit organization called Common Hope for Health to support a community health clinic he helped establish while working in rural Kenya during summer breaks.
In Memoriam
James Whittenberger, who chaired the Department of Physiology at HSPH from 1948 to 1980, passed away on Saturday, March 17. He was 93 years old.
Whittenberger earned an MD in 1938 from the University of Chicago, where he worked as a fellow in surgery under Charles B. Huggins, who later earned a Nobel Prize in Medicine. During World War II and immediately afterward, he served with the U.S. Army Medical Corps.
Whittenberger came to HSPH in 1946 and worked with Cecil Drinker, former dean of the School, and Philip Drinker, co-developer of the iron lung. In 1951, Whittenberger became a professor of physiology and, seven years later, was named the James Stevens Simmons professor of public health. He served as associate dean for academic affairs from 1966 to 1972 and then as associate dean of the Faculty of Public Health until 1978.
In his early career, Whittenberger studied respiratory mechanics and the use of artificial ventilation in polio patients. Later, he examined pollution’s effects on the physiology of respiratory systems, incorporating toxicology and epidemiology into the Department of Physiology. In 1958 he founded and directed the Kresge Center for Environmental Health at HSPH, now called the Harvard NIEHS Center for Environmental Health after the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at the NIH.
In the 1970s, he co-chaired the first and second Task Forces for Research Planning in Environmental Health Sciences for NIEHS. This work led to the publication of the influential reports “Man’s Health and the Environment: Some Research Needs” and “Human Health and the Environment: Some Research Needs,” intended to guide national planning efforts in environmental health research.
A memorial service is currently being planned.
