A professorship named in honor of “the father of modern medicine” was celebrated this spring along with the first faculty member to hold it, an ophthalmological leader in antibiotic-resistant infection.
“It gives me great pleasure to preside over the celebration of the Sir William Osler Professorship in Ophthalmology, and with it the installation of the inaugural incumbent, Michael Gilmore,” said HMS Dean for Academic and Clinical Affairs Nancy Tarbell in March.
Gilmore, the Charles L. Schepens Professor of Ophthalmology, came to HMS in 2004 to serve as president, CEO and director of research for the HMS-affiliated Schepens Eye Research Institute. In 2010 he moved his laboratories to the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, where he is working to develop new treatments for antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus and other infections. Staphylococcus is a leading cause of infection of the cornea, especially in wearers of contact lenses.
A member of the steering committees of the Harvard University Microbial Sciences Initiative and the Infectious Disease Initiative of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Gilmore is a global leader in understanding antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection, with a special interest in eye disease. By understanding how microbes interact with human tissue, he hopes to develop new ways to treat and prevent infections.
Gilmore is currently the principal investigator of the Harvard-wide Program on Antibiotic Resistance, which involves co-investigators from HMS, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard College. Sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the program combines the talents of biochemists, molecular biologists and infectious disease specialists, using cutting-edge high-throughput technologies, to identify new compounds that may become the next generation of treatments for antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.
The late Susan Morse Hilles established the Sir William Osler Professorship in Ophthalmology in 1984, naming the professorship for her ancestor—a Canadian physician, pathologist, educator and historian who has been called the “father of modern medicine.” Gilmore thanked Hilles’ daughter, Susan Hilles Bush, who was in attendance.
John Fernandez, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and Joan Whitten Miller, chair of the HMS Department of Ophthalmology and chief of Ophthalmology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Mass General, congratulated Gilmore in their remarks.
