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.
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 AdvancesThe 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.
Daniel C. Tosteson, the Caroline Shields Walker Distinguished Professor of Cell Biology, who served an extraordinary two decades as dean of Harvard Medical School, from 1977 to 1997, died peacefully on May 27 after a long illness. He was 84 years old.
“Daniel Tosteson was a towering figure in the modern history of Harvard Medical School,” said Jeffrey S. Flier, the Medical School’s current dean. “His vision and leadership brought major and enduring changes in HMS education, research, and the School’s relationship to the world. Since I assumed leadership of the School, I met with him many times, and despite his increasing disability, his passion for education, research and the Medical School never waned. He will be sorely missed.”
By all accounts, Tosteson was an exceptional leader. His greatest legacy is the New Pathway, a radical restructuring of medical education launched in 1985 that combined several innovations being tested separately at other medical schools. Part of Tosteson’s rationale for the New Pathway was his belief that medical students would learn better if they were responsible for this process. In lieu of learning primarily through lectures and texts, Harvard medical students began studying cases that guide them toward acquiring the core knowledge of medicine through their own efforts. In small groups, they analyze each case, seeking the information they need. They thereby cultivate skills and attitudes to decode unfamiliar medical situations and scientific understanding to deal with fields in which progress keeps accelerating. Harvard was not the first medical school to institute problem-based learning, but its program was comprehensive and has since been emulated by medical schools all over the United States, as well as abroad.
“Dan’s clear objective was to prepare students to be lifelong learners as our knowledge of biomedical science expanded,” said S. James Adelstein, the Paul C. Cabot distinguished professor of medical biophysics at HMS, who served as executive dean for academic programs during most of Tosteson’s tenure. “He felt it was important to work not only on the knowledge base, but also on the attitudinal base, establishing attitudes toward learning and toward patients.”
Besides revolutionizing teaching, Tosteson kept the content of the curriculum more than current by anticipating future scientific developments. He was one of the first to foresee the revolution in molecular biology, and he positioned Harvard to move forward accordingly. In 1980, he established the Department of Genetics, one of the first in the nation, “and reorganized the departmental structure on the School’s Boston Quadrangle, strengthening existing departments and creating the new Department of Cell Biology and that of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology,” said Philip Leder, the John Emory Andrus professor of genetics and former chair of the Genetics Department. In addition, while many others were debating the role of functional genomics, Tosteson implemented a plan to develop this nascent field, which investigates the function of genes in the living organism.
Tosteson also invested in graduate education. He expanded the size of the PhD program and established the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program, which enables students to pursue doctoral work with faculty members in one of five basic science departments at HMS or in its 17 affiliated hospitals and research institutes.
In addition, he expanded HMS’s scope beyond clinical and basic science, creating the Department of Health Care Policy and that of Social Medicine (now called Global Health and Social Medicine).
To help attract new faculty, Tosteson renovated most of the Medical School’s existing buildings, which had remained untouched since their construction in 1906. He also had several new ones constructed, including the Warren Alpert Building for basic research.
To finance these initiatives, Tosteson boosted HMS’s endowment from $128 million to $1.1 billion. At a time when other academic institutions eschewed collaborations with industry, Tosteson pursued support from corporations with strong programs in biomedical research and development, even while he protected the intellectual independence and discoveries of Harvard’s faculty. At the same time, Tosteson oversaw development of the School’s first conflict-of-interest policy that has served as a national model.
Tosteson opened the Medical School to a range of innovative initiatives. With Count Giovanni Auletta Armenise of Italy, he established the Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Foundation to support multidisciplinary, basic research by leading scientists at HMS and Italian institutions.
Under Tosteson’s leadership, HMS also established a publishing venture, now Harvard Health Publications, which helps faculty authors with the support and publishing expertise to produce and disseminate high-quality medical and healthcare information for a lay audience through books, newsletters, and electronic services.
“Dan Tosteson was a man of action,” said Marc Kirschner, chair of the Department of Systems Biology at HMS. “He was inspired by a vision through which he reinvented medical education, completely renovated the aging physical structure of the Medical School, created new departments and then hired the very best scientists to lead them. Despite his outward formality, I will remember Dan as a passionate and loving person who created a unique community at Harvard, largely through his selfless commitment and fueled by his tireless personal efforts.”
Throughout his administrative career, Tosteson maintained his position as a laboratory researcher at the forefront of membrane phenomena. This work has led to a better understanding of degenerative diseases, including atherosclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.
A Milwaukee native, Tosteson attended Harvard College and was a 1949 graduate of Harvard Medical School. He completed his medical residency at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital and held fellowships at Brookhaven National Laboratories, the National Institutes of Health, and Cambridge University in England. He served on the faculty at Duke University Medical School for 14 years, first as a professor and then as the chair of physiology and pharmacology. For two years prior to coming to HMS as dean, he was dean of the Division of Biological Science and vice president of the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Over his long career, Tosteson received numerous awards and honors, including the Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical Education from the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Harvard Medal for extraordinary service to Harvard University, and honorary degrees from New York University, Johns Hopkins University, the Université Catholique de Louvain, Duke University, Emory University, and Ludwig Maximilian University. Last year, Tosteson received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Harvard University in recognition of his outstanding achievements.
Tosteson was a member of several scientific and scholarly societies, including the Institute of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he served as president from 1997 to 2000.
In addition to science, poetry was an important part of Tosteson’s life, and he kept a large portrait of Robert Frost in his office. “He believed strongly in the perfectibility of humans,” Adelstein said, “but science was only one tool; the humanistic side was equally important.”
Tosteson is survived by his wife, Magdalena, a lecturer in the HMS Department of Cell Biology, of Boston; sons Joshua of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Tor of Lyme, N.H.; daughters Heather of Atlanta, Ga., Ingrid of Boston, Zoe of Caracas, Venezuela, and Carrie Marias of Paris, France; and a brother, Thomas of West Palm Beach, Fla.
A memorial service will be held on a date to be announced.
