Headlines at Hopkins: news releases from across the 
university Headlines
@Hopkins
News by Topic: news releases organized by subject News by Topic
News by School: news releases organized by the 
university's 9 schools & divisions News by School
Events Open to the Public (campus-wide) Events Open
to the Public
Blue Jay Sports: Hopkins Athletic Center Blue Jay Sports
Search News Site Search the Site

Contacting the News Staff: directory of university 
press officers Contacting
News Staff
Receive News Via Email (listservs) Receive News
Via Email
Resources for Journalists Resources for Journalists

Faculty Experts: searchable resource organized by 
topic Faculty Experts
Faculty and Administrator Photos Faculty and
Administrator
Photos
Faculty with Homepages Faculty with Homepages
Hopkins in the News: news clips about Hopkins Hopkins in
the News

JHUNIVERSE Homepage JHUniverse Homepage
Headlines at Hopkins
Commencement 1999

Nominations for The Johns Hopkins University
Society of Scholars
1998-99

Kenneth I. Berns, M.D., Ph.D.
  
Present
Position
Interim Vice President for Health Affairs
Dean
College of Medicine
University of Florida
PO Box 100014
Gainesville, FL 32611-9500
Postdoctoral Experience 1966-67
Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics
(formerly Department of Microbiology)
School of Medicine
Nominator Thomas J. Kelly Jr., M,D., Ph.D
Field of
Interest
Dr. Kenneth I. Berns received his A.B., M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Johns Hopkins. After a pediatrics internship at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Berns served for three years in the U.S. Public Health Service at the NIH. In 1970, he returned to Johns Hopkins as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Pediatrics. In 1976, he left Hopkins to become Professor and Chairman of Immunology and Medical Microbiology and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Florida College of Medicine. From 1984-97 he was R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor and Chairman of Microbiology at Cornell University Medical College. He is currently the Interim Vice President for Health Affairs and the Dean of the College of Medicine at the University of Florida.
   Dr. Berns has devoted most of his scientific research career to the study of the molecular basis of replication of the human parvovirus, adeno-associated virus (AAV). He has been a major contributor to our knowledge concerning the ability of AAV to establish latent infections in human cells and to be reactivated by adenovirus infection. His work was instrumental in providing the basis for the current interest in the use of this virus as a vector for gene therapy. He has served as president of the American Society for Virology and the American Society of Microbiology and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
George A. Bray, M.D.
  
Present
Position
Executive Director and Professor
Pennington Biomedical Research Center
6400 Perkins Road
Baton Rouge, LA 70808
Postdoctoral Experience 1957-58
Department of Medicine
School of Medicine
Nominator Simeon Margolis, Ph.D.
Field of
Interest
Dr. Bray's interest in obesity began with a question about the biological basis for inherited obesity. Using as models genetically obese mice and rats available when he was a fellow and faculty member at Tufts, he began a series of animal studies that have continued for 35 years. He has examined the effects of food restriction, dietary composition, insulin resistance, and the administration of thyroid hormone, cholecystokinin, and various anorectic drugs in rats obese due to genetic factors or hypothalamic lesions. His laboratory studies have also shown that dietary fat intake can be selectively regulated either by a pancreatic peptide (enterostatin) or by serotonin release in the brain. The results of these studies have provided an understanding that one important cause of obesity is defects in the feedback system that regulates food intake. He then used the insights gained from these animal experiments to study patients with obesity in the clinic. Findings regarding the role of monoamines in controlling food intake have contributed to his studies on the role of drugs that modulate neurotransmitters as possible treatments for obesity. He is the lead author on the multicenter study of subutramine, a drug that has just been approved for the treatment of obesity in the US.
Robert M. Chanock, M.D.
  
Present
Position
Chief
Laboratory of Infectious Diseases
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD 20817
Postdoctoral Experience 1956-57
Departments of Epidemiology
School of Hygiene and Public Health
Nominator Diane E. Griffin, Ph.D.
Field of
Interest
Dr. Robert Chanock has had a career committed to the discovery of the etiology of many respiratory diseases and to developing vaccines for virus diseases of children and adults. He was responsible for the initial isolations of many respiratory viruses, e.g. respiratory syncytial virus, parainfluenza virus, corona viruses and a number of strains of rhinovirus. He also was the first to isolate and characterize a new type of infectious agent, mycoplasma. He defined most of what we know about the virologic and epidemiologic characteristics and the clinical spectrum of these infections. As chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the NIAID he currently leads the largest U.S. program for developing new vaccines for important virus diseases of humans. He has trained many of the leaders in human virology. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973.
Michael J. Dunn, M.D.
  
Present
Position
Professor of Medicine
Dean & Executive Vice President
Medical College of Wisconsin
Office of the Dean
8701 Watertown Plank Road
Milwaukee, WI 53226
Postdoctoral Experience 1962-65
Department of Medicine
School of Medicine
Nominator W. Gordon Walker, M.D.
Field of
Interest
Dr. Dunn's early classic description of experimental magnesium depletion in the human, and subsequent studies of erythrocyte ion transport that clarified previously disparate views of sodium transport across the red blood cell membrane are recognized as outstanding research contributions.
   His most significant and sustained research on the role of prostaglandins in modulating renal function has provided new insights into the endocrine regulation of kidney function in health and disease. His studies of the renal toxicity of widely used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents, described in scholarly contributions in this field have provided both clinical guidance and new insights into the basic physiology of the renal circulation.
   Throughout he has carried a heavy administrative load first as Director of the Renal Division and Associate Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, followed by Hanna Payne Professor of Medicine and Director of Nephrology plus service as Associate Director and Acting Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University of Medicine. Currently he is Professor of Medicine and Dean and Executive Vice President of the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Gerald Finerman, M.D.
  
Present
Position
Chairman
Department of Orthopaedics
University of California-Los Angeles
Room 76-134
P.O. Box 956902
Los Angeles, CA 90095-6902
Postdoctoral Experience 1966-69
Department of Orthopaedics
School of Medicine
Nominator John P. Kostuik, M.D.
Field of
Interest
Dr. Finerman was a resident in the last 60's at Johns Hopkins and at that time set a high standard for his forthcoming academic career. Dr. Finerman is currently Professor and Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedics at University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Finerman received his undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania and his M.D. at Johns Hopkins. Following his residency he was appointed as an Assistant Professor and was in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Johns Hopkins for two years. Together with Lee Riley, Jr., he initiated the total hip service at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Finerman joined the UCLA Orthopaedic Department faculty in 1971 where he specializes in sports medicine joint replacement. He has been in charge of the sports medicine program for the Department intercollegiate athletics. He has been chief medical officer for the UCLA village in the 1984 Olympic games. While a resident at Hopkins he received a Kappa Delta Award for Orthopaedic Research from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. He has recently been awarded a large grant from the National Institutes of Health to Evaluate Kinematics of the Cruciate Ligaments of the Knee. He has more than 100 peer review publications and numerous book chapters. He is a member of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the American Orthopaedic Association as well as many subspeciality organizations. He was awarded an American/British Canadian Fellowship, the highest achievement in academic orthopaedics for young faculty. Dr. Finerman has maintained a close relationship with Hopkins since his departure and he has committed to the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Hopkins.
Mark T. Keating, M.D.
  
Present
Position
Professor of Medicine
Human Genetics and HHMI Investigator
Eccles Institute of Human Genetics
University of Utah
78 North Laurel Street
Salt Lake City, UT 84103
Postdoctoral Experience 1980-83
Department of Medicine
School of Medicine
Nominator Victor A. McKusick, M.D.
Field of
Interest
Following three years of residency training on the Osler Medical Service of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Mark Keating worked for 6 years at the University of California San Francisco. Since 1989, he has been a member of the faculty of the University of Utah, where he is now professor of medicine and human genetics and is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
   Keating is a pioneer in molecular cardiology. Starting in 1991 and using methods of map-based gene discovery, he and his colleagues characterized the genes mutant in four forms of the long QT syndrome, a cause of cardiac arrhythmia and sudden death.
   In 1993, Keating and his students showed that the gene for elastin is mutated or deleted in cases of the aortic malformation called supravalvar aortic stenosis. They went on to show that the elastin gene and neighboring genes are deleted in about 90% of patients with Williams syndrome, a developmental abnormality that has supravalvar aortic stenosis as one feature.
   Thus, the studies of Keating demonstrated that elastin is essential to arterial morphogenesis. His studies of the several forms of long QT syndrome revealed new information about the function of potassium ion channels in the heart and provided DNA diagnosis in family members at risk for sudden death.
David T. Kelly, MBChB
  
Present
Position
Scandrett Professor of Cardiology
Director
Hallstrom Institute of Cardiology
Royal Prince Alfred Hospital
Missenden Road
Camperdown
NSW 2050
Australia
Postdoctoral Experience 1969-76
Department of Medicine
Division of Cardiology
Nominator Richard S. Ross, M.D.
Field of
Interest
David Kelly received medical and cardiology training in New Zealand and help junior faculty posts in London and Cape Town before coming to Johns Hopkins in 1969 where he was served on the faculty until 1976. At present he is the Scandrett Professor of Cardiology at the University of Sydney and Director of the Hallstrom Institute of Cardiology at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
   While at Hopkins during the 60's, Kelly was involved in the development of radio nucleotide imaging of the heart. When he returned to Australia he established the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Sydney (ref. 32,33, 34). He has been a pioneer in cardiovascular pharmacology and in the use of vasodilators in myocardial infarction.
   More recently, his interests have been directed toward the epidemiology of coronary disease and he was invited to give the Paul Dudley White International Lecture at the 1996 Annual Scientific Session of the American Heart Association (ref. 122).
   Kelly has been President of the International Society and the Federation of Cardiology and will be President of the 14th World Congress of Cardiology to be held in Sydney in the year 2002.
Jon C. Liebman, Ph.D.
  
Present
Position
Professor Emeritus
Department of Civil Engineering
School of Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
3219 Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory
205 N. Mathews
Urbana, IL 61801
Postdoctoral Experience 1965-72
Department of Geography & Environmental Engineering (formerly Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences)
School of Engineering
Nominators Charles ReVelle, Ph.D. and M Gordon Wolman, Ph.D.
Field of
Interest
Professor Jon C. Liebman was educated at the University of Colorado (Bachelor of Civil Engineering) and Cornell University (Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy). He began his academic career on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University where he established one of the nation's first research programs in Environmental Systems Engineering. During his tenure at Hopkins, he was known as one of the University's finest teachers of undergraduates to whom he provided Hopkins' first course on scientific computing. He then served as faculty member, Associate Head and Head of the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, one of the largest and best Civil Engineering Departments in the country.
   Dr. Liebman's pioneering research has been in the area of Environmental Systems Analysis, a field which blends the tools of operations research with the practical problems of environmental management. In particular, he has done path-breaking research in applications of mathematical modeling and optimization to the regional management of water quality; his seminal dynamic programming work led to extensive follow-on research on this important problem. He established the first research program in the nation which focused on optimal methods for solid waste management. With his numerous students, he studies the complex mathematical problems associated with collection, routing, transfer station siting, and landfill siting, in order to determine cost efficient regional solid waste disposal systems. He has also published extensively on optimal sewer system design and on the design of water distribution systems.
   As one of the founders of the discipline of Environmental Systems Engineering, Professor Liebman helped to established one of the most significant approaches to decision making and management in the broad spectrum encompassed by the word "environment" environmental policy, and in virtually all academic departments of civil and environmental engineering in the country.
Paul Meier, Ph.D.
  
Present
Position
Howard Levene Professor
Department of Statistics
Columbia University
616 Math Building
New York, NY 10027
Postdoctoral Experience 1952-57
Department of Biostatistics
School of Hygiene and Public Health
Nominator Scott Zeger, Ph.D.
Field of
Interest
In 1958, Dr. Paul Meier published a paper with E.L. Kaplan in the Journal of the American Statistical Association (the leading statistics journal) entitled "Nonparametric Estimation from Incomplete Observations" introducing the now-famous Kaplan-Meier estimate of the survival function, which populates every major medical and public health journal throughout the world. With the Cox proportional hazzards model, the Kaplan-Meier estimate of a survival function is perhaps the most commonly-used statistical method in clinical research. Paul Meier started this seminal work as a graduate student at Princeton University and completed it as a faculty member in the Johns Hopkins Department of Biostatistics. With this single paper, Dr. Meier established himself as the leading biostatistics of his day. He went on to a distinguished career, serving for more than 30 years as professor of statistics at the University of Chicago. During this time, he became the leading America expert in the design, conduct, and analysis of data from clinical trials. Throughout his career, Dr. Meier has been a trusted advisor to clinical researchers in academia, industry, and government. Dr. Meier is widely recognized for his depth of understanding, pursuit of challenging problems, and as never having lost a good argument.
Nicholas Muzyczka, M.D.
  
Present
Position
Professor
Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology
University of Florida Health Science
P.O. Box 100266
Gainesville, FL 32610
Postdoctoral Experience 1974-1977
Department of Biology & Genetics
(formerly Department of Microbiology)
School of Medicine
Nominator Maurice J. Bessman, Ph.D.
Field of
Interest
Professor Muzyczka's Ph.D. thesis from the Department of Biology at Hopkins on bacterial viruses was seminal to our understanding of the biochemical basis of spontaneous mutations. Later, as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Daniel Nathan's laboratory, he began his work with animal viruses that has made a leader in the area of gene therapy, using Adeno-Associated Virus as the vector for replacing defective genes. Professor Muzyczka is one of those rare individuals able to bridge the gap between basic and applied research, and his fundamental studies on viral replication are instrumental in advancing the technology of gene replacement in the treatment of human disease.
Carol Wolf Runyan, M.P.H., Ph.D.
  
Present
Position
Professor
Department of Health Behavior and Health Education Director
University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
204 Chase Hall - CB# 7505
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7505
Postdoctoral Experience 1985-86
Department of Health Policy & Management
School of Hygiene and Public Health
Nominator Susan P. Baker, M.P.H.
Field of
Interest
Professor Carol Runyan is a nationally and internationally renowned scholar whose achievements and leadership in injury control have placed her at the forefront of this critical field. Shortly after completing her Postdoctoral Fellowship in Epidemiology at our School of Public Health in 1986, she was appointed Associated Director of the Injury Prevention Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). She is now the Director of that center, overseeing a large group of faculty and students and a wide variety of injury research projects. She serves on CDC's Advisory Committee for Injury Prevention and on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Injury Control Research Centers.
   Dr. Runyan's research contributions have included seminal research on adolescent injuries and occupational injuries; these major studies were accomplished during a period when both areas lacked good epidemiological work. Her papers on injuries to women have called attention to the underrecognized fact that injuries are the major cause of death among women for the first several decades of life. Her research is now making important contributions to the problems of violence against women.
Olive Shisana, Ph.D.
  
Present
Position
Executive Director
Family and Health Services
World Health Organization
20 Avenue APPIA
CH-1211
Geneva 27
Switzerland
Postdoctoral Experience 1981-84
Department of Health Policy and Management
(formerly Department of Behavior Sciences)
School of Hygiene and Public Health
Nominators David D. Celentano, Sc.D., M.H.S. and Richard Morrow, Ph.D.
Field of
Interest
Dr. Olive Shisana is a courageous, effective and tireless leader who has led the extraordinary transformation of South Africa's apartheid separate and unequal hospital-based health systems through to an integrated, equitable district-based primary health care-oriented system. She is a highly articulate speaker, passionate in her views and has a deep sense of compassion for those in need.
   Because of apartheid, repression and serve political upheavals in South Africa, Olive fled from anticipated arrest for her active anti-apartheid activities in the mid 1970s to continue her education in the U.S. She obtained a Masters degree from Loyola College in Baltimore and then a ScD from the Department of Behavioral Sciences (social epidemiology focus; David Celentano, advisor) at Johns Hopkins in 1984. After graduating, she joined the Department of Human Services, District of Columbia from 1986 to 1991, serving as Chief Statistical Advisor and then Chief of Research and Statistics. As an African National Congress (ANC) member who fled the country during the mid-1970s, during a period of extreme hardship and persecution, she maintained an active role in the struggle to reform South Africa from the USA. With the revolutionary political shifts in South Africa that would allow her considerable talent, energy and expertise to be put to good use in rebuilding her homeland, she returned in mid-1991 to join The South African Medical Research Council (MRC).
   While with the MRC she was seconded to the University of the Western Cape to develop in parallel with the University of the Transvaal, the first school of public health in South Africa. She became Technical Advisor to the ANC on Provincial Restructuring of the Administrations, Civil Service Restructuring and Affirmative Action a long bureaucratic name for one of the most important administrative bodies that was to transform the nature of South Africa and was instrumental in radically redrawing boundaries for the Provinces and Districts - a highly contentious undertaking, but fundamental to the drive for equitable social services.
   When the new Government of National Unity took over, she was appointed Director of the South African Department of Health in 1995. Here she put to use her scholarly talents of eloquent persuasion and document of facts in successfully carrying through the full transformation of the previously inequitable, highly fractionated, racially structured health system in the face of unrelenting opposition by the still powerful and still incumbent members of the previous health establishment. With great perseverance she oversaw the most difficult aspects of the massive reconstruction with great success.
   Largely because of her remarkably courageous and uncompromising, but highly effective and compelling management of the health system of South Africa, she was one of the first person selected by Dr. Gro Brundtland, the new Director-General of the WHO, to form her inner cabinet as Executive Director of family and Health Services. Despite the extreme intensity of work in reshaping the SA health system, she continued with her scholarly reports and discussions. Attached are copies of some academic papers including her vision for the future South Africa.
David B. Skinner, Ph.D.
  
Present
Position
President and CEO
The New York Presbyterian Hospital and New York Presbyterian Health Care System
525 East 68th Street
New York, NY 10021
Postdoctoral Experience 1968-72
Department of Surgery
School of Medicine
Nominator John L. Cameron, M.D.
Field of
Interest
Dr. David Skinner is a general thoraic surgeon whose first faculty appointment was at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery in 1968. During his tenure there he was promoted first to Associate Professor and then to Professor. His major interests were esophageal surgery, pulmonary surgery and support of the failing heart. He left Hopkins after a five year stay to become the Dallas B. Phemister Professor of Surgery and Chairman of the Department at the University of Chicago. He continued to make many important contributions in the field of esophageal surgery, and when he left the University of Chicago in 1987 to become the President of New York Hospital, he was recognized as one of the outstanding esophageal surgeons in the world. His leadership at New York Hospital took them from a period of losing a million dollars a week to a very successful institution, that recently combined with Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, with Dr. Skinner as the CEO of the combined New York Presbyterian Hospital and New York Presbyterian Health System. Dr. Skinner has clearly been one of the leaders in American Surgery since the middle 1970's.
Eric Jeffrey Topol, M.D.
  
Present
Position
Chairman, Department of Cardiology
Director, Joseph J. Jacob Center for Thrombosis and Vascular Biology
Postdoctoral Experience 1982-1985
Department of Medicine
Division of Cardiology
Nominator Kenneth L. Baughman, M.D.
Field of
Interest
Dr. Eric Topol received his undergraduate degree from University of Virginia with highest distinction with a major in biomedicine. He received his medical doctorate with honors in 1979 from University of Rochester School of Medicine. Internal medicine training was obtained at the University of California San Francisco and completed in 1982. From 1982 to 1985 Dr. Topol was a fellow in the Division of Cardiology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He subsequently was recruited by the University of Michigan School of Medicine where he rose to the rank of Professor in 1991 and was the Director of the cardiac Catheterization Laboratory. He was subsequently appointed the Chairman of the Department of Cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, where he also directs the Joseph J. Jacobs Center for Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.
   Dr. Topol's curriculum vitae reflects the magnitude of his impact in the area of Cardiovascular diseases. He has authored or co-authors 528 original manuscripts, 15 books, 99 book chapters, 40 letters to the editor, 406 abstracts and 54 non-peer review articles. While a fellow at Hopkins, Dr. Topol made original observations on the influence of bypass graft surgery on stunned myocardium and the early use of thrombolytic agents (TPA). Eric has not only directed a very successful department of cardiology but has organized a world-wide network of cardiovascular investigators who have completed a multitude of randomized, prospective placebo-controlled trials which have dramatically forwarded our knowledge of evidence-based cardiology.
Gayle Woodson, M.D.
  
Present
Position
Professor
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck surgery
University of Tennessee
1572 Central Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
Postdoctoral Experience 1976-78
Department of General Surgery
School of Medicine
Nominator Charles W. Cummings, M.D.
Field of
Interest
Dr. Woodson currently is a Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Tennessee. She attended medical school at Baylor and did her surgical internship and first year of resident surgical training at Johns Hopkins, prior to returning to Baylor in the otolaryngological head and neck surgical training program, which she completed in 1981. She completed a fellowship in laryngeal physiology at the Institute of Laryngology and Otology in London, England and became certified by both the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada and the American Board of Otolaryngology subsequent to her training. She was an Assistant Professor at the Baylor College of Medicine, Department of Otorhinolaryngology until 1987 when she moved to the University of California at San Diego, School of Medicine where she was fist an Assistant then Associate Professor. She moved with her husband to the University of Tennessee in 1993 where she is a Professor. Dr. Woodson serves as a Director of the American Board of Otolaryngology, and is on the residency review committee for otolaryngology. She has served on the NIDCD Program Advisory Committee, and DRG Communicative Sciences Study Section. Dr. Woodson is currently president of the Society of University Otolaryngologists and the Advisory Council for Otolaryngology for the American College of Surgeons and has served on the Council of the American Society for Head and Neck Surgery.
   Dr. Woodson serves on 4 editorial boards of peer reviewed journals and has authored 85 publications and book chapters. It is my opinion and the opinion of many within the specialty that Dr. Woodson is the most distinguished female otolaryngologist in this country.


Go to Commencement 1999 Home Page

Go to Headlines@HopkinsHome Page