NEWS Jr., Education Award (a national award), presented by the Western Society for Pediatric Research at its annual meeting in Carmel, California. Then, after a national search, in August he was named president of Sanford Research/ USD (University of South Dakota). Joel Kleinman, SB’66, MD’73, PhD’74, deputy chief of the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health, was awarded the Leiber Prize for Schizophrenia Research by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. For more than three decades, he has built a unique collection of post-mortem human brains that has enabled pioneering studies into the molecular roots of schizophrenia — and recently a landmark database that holds secrets to how genetic variation affects brain structure and function. William Lawson, MD’78, is investigating barriers that prevent minorities from receiving necessary mental health care. Lawson is chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Howard University Hospital and in Howard’s College of Medicine. Through this joint five-year study with researchers at Dartmouth College, Lawson hopes to improve mental health and substance abuse services offered to African Americans. Stephen D. Nimer, MD’79, has been named the new director of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. Nimer, the Alfred P. Sloan Chair in Cancer Research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, assumed the key University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and UHealth-University of Miami Health System post this spring. Audrius V. Plioplys, MD’75, was honored in December at the 45th Excellence Award Dinner hosted by the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture for contributions to neuroscience, neurology and art, and for his dedication to preserving the memory of the victims of Soviet deportations. In addition to his art and research, for the past 20 years, he has dedicated himself to caring for children and young adults with severe cerebral palsy. Burton VanderLaan, MD’77, was named medical director for network effectiveness at Priority Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in December. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and is board certified in both internal medicine and oncology.
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1990s GOING GREEN
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William P. Welbourne, MD’72, retired from his position as director and founding member of a medical group in rural upstate New York. He is working as a staff physician for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Gail Whitman-Elia, AB’71, MD’76, founder of the Advanced Fertility & Reproductive Endocrinology Institute in West Columbia, South Carolina, announced in January that she was opening a new center — a 14,000-square-foot facility that is the most technologically advanced of its kind in the Southeast.
1980s Robert A. Behar, LAB’81, AB’83, MD’87, MBA’11, wrote, “Life is good. After spending four years at Stanford, I moved to Houston and started a private practice in radiation oncology. This eventually led me to founding a general acute care hospital, which I currently administer. In the middle of all of this I got married and had two beautiful children. Last year, I went back to school to get an MBA at the UChicago business school. After 25 years in medicine I am slowly winding down my clinical practice to focus more on business and administration.” Bruce A. Beutler, MD’81, not only received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2011, but also was awarded the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine, another international award dedicated to furthering societal progress, enhancing quality of life, and enriching humanity’s spiritual civilization. Richard Jacobson, PhD’80, MD’82, writes that after 20 years in Milwaukee, he has left academia and now is in practice in Charlotte as a staff physician at Novant Health/Presbyterian Medical Group. James Munis, AB’82, MD’86, recently published a physiology textbook through Oxford University Press/ Mayo Scientific Press titled “Just Enough Physiology.” The book is written for a general audience as well as medical and scientific readers. It takes a rather unorthodox approach to medical education by highlighting
extreme environmental and comparative physiology, as well as the history, personalities and stories of discovery associated with them. Laura Niklason, PhD’88, is a professor at Yale University and founder of Humacyte Inc. In October, Humacyte’s new technology to create off-the-shelf human veins for use in lifesaving vascular surgeries was recognized by Popular Mechanics magazine as one of the “Breakthrough” innovations of 2011 that is “changing our world for the better.” The development and function of these readily available bioengineered veins also were featured in the February 2011 edition of Science Translational Medicine. Larry Ozeran, MD’86, published a book, ”H.I.T. or Miss: Lessons Learned from Health Information Technology Implementations.” Along with his co-authors, he presents 17 actual (but anonymous) cases of health information technology (HIT) implementations — highlighting specific failures and how they might have been avoided. Each chapter can generally be read by a busy professional in less than 15 minutes. Ozeran is president of Clinical Informatics Inc. He also serves as associate clinical professor in the Health Informatics Program at University of California Davis, chair of the Yuba-Sutter Healthcare Council; and as a member of the Cal eConnect Policy Advisory Group, the Physician Advisory Council for CalHIPSO, and the AMIA Public Policy Committee. Tej M. Singh, AB’89, MD’93, was selected by the Society for Vascular Surgery to participate in a key surgical rotation at Landstuhl Regional Military Center (LRMC) in Germany this past October. He volunteered his vascular surgical services and provided education to the medical staff at LRMC, a level 1 trauma center and the largest U.S. hospital outside of America, in order to better care for the wounded warriors from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Brian Cole, MD’90, MBA’90, was recognized by Becker’s Orthopedic, Spine & Pain Management Review, in its “125 Knee Surgeons and Specialists to Know.” Cole is the head of the Cartilage Restoration Center at Rush University Medical Center. He also serves on the board of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and spends time as a team physician for the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls. Vincent S. DeGeare, MD’92, is an interventional cardiologist in Louisville, Kentucky. He and his wife, Doreen, have two teenage children, Eric and David. Jonathan Sherin, PhD’97, MD’98, has joined Volunteers of America, one of the nation’s oldest and largest human service charities, in the newly created role of executive vice president for veterans affairs and chief medical officer. Sherin will guide the organization’s continued expansion of services that target challenges facing veterans, including post-traumatic stress, depression, mild traumatic brain injury, substance abuse, homelessness, suicide, workforce development, and education.
2000s Todd Cassese, MD’04, has been appointed assistant professor of medicine and director of the Clinical Arts and Science course at the Frank H. Netter, MD, School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. A specialist in creating progressive curricula, he will oversee the clinical skills taught to first- and second-year medical students. “We’ll be developing community service models that are going to help students become patient-centered primary care physicians,” Cassese said, adding that medical students will see patients during all four years of medical school. Martha Gulati, SM’02, who completed her internship, residency, and cardiology fellowship at the University of Chicago, was honored for her commitment to women’s heart health by Woman’s Day magazine during the Red Dress Awards ceremony at Lincoln Center in New York City in February 2012. Gulati, who is Ohio State Medical Center’s director of preventive cardiology and women’s cardiovascular health, said, “I am honored to be among the women
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