Joseph Rizzo
Professor of Ophthalmology
Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
Rizzo is the director of the Neuro-Ophthalmology Service at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) and director of a clinical fellowship training program involving Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He does clinical research on a variety of disorders that impact vision, particularly diseases of the retina and optic nerve. Rizzo is also the founder of the Boston Retinal Implant Project, a collaboration of the MEEI, MIT and the Veterans Administration to develop a retinal prosthesis to restore vision for patients with certain forms of acquired retinal blindness.
Carolyn Mountford
Professor of Radiology
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Mountford’s research focuses on the development and use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to measure the chemistry of tissues and organs both healthy and diseased. Her early work led to a test for breast cancer that provided information on the spread of the disease based on the chemistry of the primary tumor alone. This MRS technology has been extended to provide a non-invasive and preoperative diagnosis of cancers in clinical scanners. More recently, Mountford she has applied MRS technology to the monitoring of injuries to the human brain resulting from chronic pain and repetitive head injury. She has collaborated with clinical specialists, scientists and informatics specialists around the world.
Catherine Racowsky
Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Racowsky serves as the clinical and research director for the Assisted Reproductive Technology Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her clinical activities include providing health care to infertile couples through the culturing and nurturing of their gametes and the growth of embryos within a fully accredited laboratory in which quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement meet the highest possible standards. Her research focuses on investigating cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the meiotic process in human oocytes, the culture of human preimplantation embryos, and the assessment of embryonic viability by morphological evaluation. Other areas of research include oocyte meiotic disruption by environmental toxins, with a particular current focus on bisphenol A; identification of improved protocols for freezing oocytes in order to preserve fertility; and exploration of the association between obesity and oocyte and embryo quality. Racowsky is a board member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and a member of the ASRM Practice Committee, which writes guidelines, position statements and educational bulletins for the field of reproductive medicine as practiced in the United States. She also serves as an associate editor for two leading journals in the field of assisted reproduction.
Qiufu Ma
Professor of Neurobiology
Dana–Farber Cancer Institute
Ma’s research focuses on neural circuits involved in sensing pain, itch and temperature. In the past decade, his laboratory has been studying transcription factors that control the specification of distinct sensory modalities. More recently, Ma has grown interested in sensory coding, including neural circuits underlying the antagonistic interaction between pain and itch. As a faculty member at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, he also plans to study the molecular and cellular basis of cancer pain.
Kenneth Freedberg
Professor of Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard School of Public Health
Freedberg is director of the Program in Epidemiology and Outcomes Research at the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research. Freedberg’s research interests focus on cost-effectiveness analysis and clinical epidemiology related to HIV clinical care and policy. Much of his work centers around the “Cost-effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications (CEPAC)” group, an HIV modeling team that works on HIV treatment strategies. Freedberg directs CEPAC in collaboration with investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston University, Yale University and Weill Cornell Medical College in the United States; international collaborators include investigators at YRGCARE and the Tuberculosis Research Centre in Chennai, India, the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa, the PAC-CI Program in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and the national AIDS program in Zimbabwe. Formerly the chair of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) Outcomes Committee, Freedberg has developed efforts to incorporate economic analysis into AIDS clinical trials on an international level.
Roy Kishony
Professor of Systems Biology
Harvard Medical School
Kishony studies microbial evolution and antibiotic resistance at the genetic, ecological and clinical levels. His work unites a background in physics and mathematics and the invention of new technologies for quantitative, systematic experimentation. Kishony aims to understand the intricate relationship between drug interactions and emergence of resistance, and to rethink clinical treatment with insights gained from microbial ecology.
Bruce Landon
Professor of Health Care Policy
Harvard Medical School
Landon’s primary research activity centers on investigating ways in which elements of health care organizations affect the quality and cost of care. He is a national leader in studying how practices and health plans influence physician behavior, and his work aims to bring together various providers of care. He has provided important insights into both the potential and the limitations of organizational and financing arrangements that have been tried in recent years. Other areas of research include the measurement of quality of care, enhanced models of primary care and comparative effectiveness research, with a focus on peripheral vascular disease.
Susan Mitchell
Professor of Medicine
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Hebrew SeniorLife
A geriatrician and health services researcher, Mitchell is a faculty member in the Gerontology Division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a senior scientist at the Hebrew Senior Life Institute for Aging Research. Mitchell’s research focuses on decision making, health outcomes and resource utilization for older persons with advanced dementia. She has been the principal investigator on several large NIH-funded grants that aim to improve the end-of-life experience for patients with advanced dementia and for their families.
Shiv Pillai
Professor of Medicine and Health Sciences and Technology
Massachusetts General Hospital
Pillai’s research focuses on the development and biology of B lymphocytes, the role of inhibitory receptors in regulating B-cell signaling in normal and malignant B cells, and the genetics of human autoimmune disorders. His laboratory discovered the pre-B cell receptor; established the role of Btk (the tyrosine kinase defective in X-linked agammaglobulinemia) in pre-B-cell and B-cell signaling; described a cell-fate decision generating follicular and marginal zone B-cell subsets; described a novel marginal zone precursor B lymphocyte; and characterized a second niche for follicular B cells in the bone marrow. The more recent discovery of the role of a sialic acid acetylesterase in regulating B-cell signaling, development and tolerance has led to studies establishing a role for rare genetic variants in the pathogenesis of human autoimmune disorders. Ongoing studies are examining the molecular basis of the development of B-cell memory, the more global role of rare genetic variants in autoimmunity, and the role of inhibitory B-cell signaling pathways in lymphomagenesis. Pillai has taught immunology to undergraduates, medical students and graduate students at Harvard. He has also received several honors for teaching, including the 2001 Irving M. London Teaching Award.
Valerie Stone
Professor of Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital
Stone is a leader in clinical innovations to improve the quality of care for
racial/ethnic minorities with HIV/AIDS and as an educational leader in primary
care residency training. Her research has focused on examining disparities in
HIV/AIDS care by race/ethnicity, and on strategies for optimizing the care of
minorities with HIV/AIDS.
Hasan Alam
Professor of Surgery
Massachusetts General Hospital
Alam is an acute care surgeon and director of the Acute Care Surgery/Surgical Critical Care Fellowship Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he is also the director of research in the Division of Trauma, Emergency Surgery and Surgical Critical Care. Alam is an international leader in trauma research. His areas of interest span resuscitation, hemorrhage control, treatment of traumatic brain injury, protective hypothermia and the development of novel cytoprotective strategies. Alam’s work is funded by the National Institutes of Health and multiple grants from the U.S. Department of Defense.
Steven Gygi
Professor of Cell Biology
Harvard Medical School
Gygi’s research capitalizes on mass-spectrometry-based proteomics. Over the past decade, his laboratory has pioneered many of the technologies necessary for comprehensively comparing protein expression across any two cellular states. These methodologies have been applied to globally measuring differences in state and activity of proteins; for example, changes in phosphorylation or ubiquitylation state can now be assessed on a proteome scale. Currently, his lab aims to move from simple binary proteome comparisons to the simultaneous, multiplexed analysis of myriad cellular settings, opening the door to patient-based proteomics.
Edward Laws
Professor of Surgery
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Laws has devoted much of his career to advancing the diagnosis and treatment of pituitary gland disorders and to studying the pathogenesis and surgical treatment of brain tumors. He leads a multidisciplinary, patient-centered pituitary/neuroendocrine center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. This program offers patients with pituitary tumors and other endocrine disorders comprehensive multispecialty care, including surgery and innovative medical therapy and radiation therapy. Laws has focused on developing technologically sophisticated, minimally invasive surgical methods using the operative endoscope, computer-based image guidance and the newly installed AMIGO system, which through intraoperative MRI assessment and metabolic imaging allows for the more effective treatment of tumors.
