The following faculty members were appointed to a full or named professorship in June and July.
Janina Galler
Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
Galler studies the long-term consequences of early childhood malnutrition on the brain, behavior and mental health outcomes. As director of a 40-year longitudinal research study, she has been following children on the island of Barbados who suffered from malnutrition in the first year of life and who are now parents and grandparents. Galler also directs a parallel multidisciplinary program of translational research in animal models.
Alan Beggs
Sir Edwin and Lady Manton Professor of Pediatrics in the Field of Genetics
Children’s Hospital Boston
Beggs utilizes molecular genetic approaches to understand the genetic basis and pathophysiology of heritable neuromuscular diseases. His work has resulted in widely adopted rapid diagnostic tests for muscular dystrophy and in a greatly improved understanding of the genetic basis for numerous congenital myopathies. Beggs is the founding director of The Manton Center for Orphan Disease Research at Children’s, which fosters a focus on the diagnosis and treatment of rare and understudied conditions.
Bertrand Delgutte
Professor of Otology and Laryngology
Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
Delgutte is interested in how the auditory system processes sounds, with the goal of understanding the neural basis of auditory perception and improving hearing aids and cochlear implants. His research approach is interdisciplinary, combining neurophysiological, computational and behavioral techniques. Ongoing research centers on neural mechanisms for listening in everyday acoustic environments comprising multiple sound sources and reverberation.
William W. Chin
Executive Dean for Research
Harvard Medical School
Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Chin embraced the early use of emerging DNA technology to make important discoveries regarding the structure, function and regulation of hormone genes. His investigations often demonstrated a translational research theme, connecting basic laboratory discoveries to their physiologic relevance in animal models and humans, showing, for example, how certain mutations can cause thyroid hormone resistance in people. Prior to HMS, Chin was at Eli Lilly and Company, where he worked for the last decade, most recently as senior vice president for discovery research and clinical investigation.
Brett Simon
Edward Lowenstein Professor of Anesthesia
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Simon’s research focuses on lung pathophysiology, particularly the use of functional imaging methods to explore the effects of lung disease on regional ventilation, perfusion and lung mechanical properties. His current projects look at lung mechanical heterogeneity in acute lung injury and respiratory failure, and the role that mechanical ventilation has in exacerbating this critical illness
Scott Swanson
Professor of Surgery
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Swanson is a senior surgeon and director of the Minimally Invasive Thoracic Surgery (MITS) Program at Brigham and Women’s. Having an extensive background in MITS, he is the Thoracic Oncology Disease Center leader for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Brigham and Women’s Thoracic Oncology Program. Swanson is involved with all aspects of lung disease, including workup and treatment of advanced lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Charles Fuchs
Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Using the resources of the prospective observational cohort studies at Harvard, Fuchs examines environmental and genetic risk factors for gastrointestinal cancers. His laboratory focuses on biochemical markers of gastrointestinal cancer risk, molecular predictors of patient prognosis in colorectal and pancreatic cancers, and the discovery of novel targets for cancer therapy. Fuchs also leads clinical trials assessing novel targeted therapies for gastrointestinal malignancies.
Kathy Jenkins
Professor of Pediatrics
Children’s Hospital Boston
Jenkins’s research focuses on understanding the variation in outcomes for congenital heart disease and other pediatric conditions, and the development of risk-adjustment methodology. Her other areas of research include evaluation of new drugs and technology for pediatric and congenital heart disease, including regulatory trials. She is the chief quality and safety officer at Children’s and, at the state, national and international level, serves in a leadership role related to measurement of quality of care for cardiac and other pediatric conditions.
Rohit Bakshi
Professor of Neurology
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Bakshi is director of the Laboratory for Neuroimaging Research at the Partners Multiple Sclerosis Center. He has pursued studies using quantitative neuroimaging funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and National Multiple Sclerosis Society. He is a former chair of the Neuroimaging Section, a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, past president of the American Society of Neuroimaging, and associate editor of the journal Neurotherapeutics.
Jeremy Wolfe
Professor of Radiology
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Wolfe moved to Brigham and Women’s in 1991 to run the Visual Attention Lab. The lab’s work is primarily concerned with visual search: how people find what they are looking for in a world full of things they are not looking for. He became professor of ophthalmology in 2002. In 2010, he was appointed director of the BWH Radiology Department’s Center for Advanced Medical Imaging (CAMI). At CAMI, his primary interest is the visual search behavior of radiologists. What causes radiologist errors and what can be done to alleviate them?
Steven Hersch
Professor of Neurology
Massachusetts General Hospital
Hersch’s research into Huntington’s disease (HD) emphasizes basic pathogenic mechanisms; the discovery and validation of potential neuroprotective therapy targets; discovery and validation of biomarkers of HD; and observational studies and early- and late-phase therapeutic trials involving patients with HD or at genetic risk for developing it. He also directs the New England Center of Excellence for Huntington’s disease and is co-chairman of the Huntington Study Group, an international clinical research consortium.
Barbara Pober
Professor of Pediatrics
Harvard Medical School
Pober, a medical geneticist, performs clinical and translational research on congenital diaphragmatic hernia, a common birth defect, and on Williams syndrome, a rare microdeletion disorder. In her research, Pober interprets and applies data derived from diverse molecular and genomic platforms and from animal models and human examples of disordered development, to enable gene discovery. She leads efforts to improve clinical care and promotes new opportunities for patients and their families to participate in clinical and therapeutic research.
Wolfgang Junger
Professor of Surgery
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School
Junger’s research focuses on the cellular aspects of inflammation, specifically as it relates to host tissue damage that is responsible for poor outcomes in patients with severe trauma, shock and sepsis. His main interests are the molecular mechanisms of leukocyte activation, neutrophil chemotaxis to sites of infection and inflammation, and the regulation of the overall immune response in trauma patients. Junger has been able to pursue translational research projects aimed at developing novel treatment strategies to reduce posttraumatic complications in trauma patients.
Elizabeth Woods
Professor of Pediatrics
Children’s Hospital Boston
Woods is involved in the areas of quality improvement, health services research, program development and evaluation, adolescent risk behaviors, screening for sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy, patient–provider communication, and HIV services and care. She is associate editor of the 5th edition of Adolescent Health Care: A Practical Guide and the accompanying handbook.
Douglas Kiel
Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
Kiel’s research focuses on the aging musculoskeletal system, including the study of falls, osteoporosis and related fractures, and sarcopenia. As principal investigator of the Framingham Osteoporosis Study, his work includes epidemiologic studies of risk factors for osteoporosis and fractures as well as the genetic epidemiology of various musculoskeletal phenotypes, currently utilizing genomewide association studies.
Gilbert Mudge
Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
Mudge’s long-term clinical and research interest is cardiac replacement therapies. He started the first cardiac transplant program in New England, with a focus now on left ventricular assist devices. He also serves as the senior director for Partners International Medical Services, with widespread responsibilities for the evolution of international educational, clinical and consulting opportunities.
Jie Shen
Professor of Neurology
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Shen’s research deals with mechanisms of synaptic dysfunction and neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. She employs mouse genetics and multidisciplinary approaches to elucidate the function of the gene products responsible for these disorders in the relevant neural circuit.
