David Coleman’s Legacy of Endowed Professorships

$26 MILLION IN ENDOWMENTS KEY TO ATTRACTING, RETAINING TOP FACULTY

Retiring from Boston University after 16 years as chair of the department of medicine at the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and physician-in-chief at Boston Medical Center, David Coleman, MD, leaves a legacy of nine endowed professorships—supported by more than $26 million— created during his tenure.

“If you told me 10 years ago that our department would create nine new endowed professorships using departmental funds and donations . . . I would have been very, very surprised,” says Coleman.

Endowed professorships are the highest academic award bestowed on a faculty member and a key tool in attracting and retaining top-flight faculty, offering both prestige and a steady source of additional funding to be used for salaries, research programs, or both, depending on how the use of the money is structured.

“Most of the people who have endowed professorships are individuals who are active researchers,” says Coleman. “There are a relatively small number of truly outstanding investigators . . . and recruiting and retaining them is extremely competitive and very challenging.

“We had, what was for me, a very large deficit in the number of endowed professorships when I arrived in 2006,” he says. “So, our strategic goal was to change that.”

Coleman says the department had sufficient reserves to support an aggressive investment strategy. A very favorable stock market over the past decade resulted in $22.5 million for endowed professorships. Private donations accounted for $3.5 million of the $26 million funding the nine positions.

Endowed professorships are managed so that the principal remains largely intact, and funding can continue in perpetuity.

Each year, the University determines what percentage of the endowment to distribute to recipients. Coleman says that amount has been around four percent of the corpus of the endowment, or approximately $100,000 on a $2.5 million professorship.

“The real benefit is that, over the long term, this department will always be able to bestow these professorships in addition to the endowed professorships that were created through other philanthropic sources,” Coleman says. “Endowed professorships are a very important source of stability and excellence for the department, and ultimately for the school and University.”

The school has honored Coleman by establishing the David Coleman, MD, Junior Faculty Prize to recognize junior faculty members in the department who exemplify excellence in research and good citizenship through volunteer leadership, educational initiatives, and commitment to diversity. Thus far, there have been more than $53,000 in donations toward a $100,000 goal.

“The award is very meaningful and flattering and is very congruent with my own values—namely, recognizing and rewarding individuals with important accomplishments and great promise for the future,” he says. ●

G. Levinsky, MD, Professorship in Nephrology

Franz J. Ingelfinger, MD, Professorship in Gastroenterology

John Noble, MD, Professorship in General Internal Medicine

Joseph A. Vita, MD, Professorship in Cardiovascular Medicine

Barbara E. Corkey, PhD, Professorship in Medicine

Jerome S. Brody, MD, Professorship in Pulmonary Medicine

Louis W. Sullivan, MD, Professorship in Medicine

David J. Salant, MD, Professorship in Nephrology

Sushrut Walker, MD* 2016

Currently Vacant** 2017

Jeffery H. Samet, MD, MA, MPH 2017

Naomi M. Hamburg, MD, MS, FACC 2018

Katya Ravid, DSc 2021

Joseph P. Mizgerd, ScD 2021

Sabrina Assoumou, MD, MPH 2021

Laurence H. Beck, MD, PhD 2022

Total Endowment $26 million***

Sources: Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Development and David L. Coleman, MD

*Inaugural chair was David Salant, MD

**Previously held by Hemant K. Roy, MD

***Each endowment is $2.5 million

Two additional professorships were created during Coleman’s tenure as department chair: the Alan S. Cohen Professor of Rheumatology (with $2.5 million from an existing endowed professorship, currently held by Tuhina Neogi, MD, PhD); and the Gitta and Saul Kurlat Chair in Hematology/Oncology (with a $2.5 million donation from the Kurlat estate; recipient to be named in 2023).

● Mac Parkman Foundation Funds Brain Injury Research in Young Athletes

The Mac Parkman Foundation has committed $258,000 to William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and Professor of Neurology and Pathology Ann McKee, MD, to study changes in the brains and neuropsychiatry of young contact sport athletes.

In collaboration with John Crary, MD, PhD, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the research team will investigate white matter degeneration and corresponding disturbances—such as behavioral changes, depression, and suicidality—in the brains of 150 deceased contact sports athletes between ages 17 and 45.

Through this project, the McKee/ Crary team will apply a novel machinelearning computational approach to digital pathology images from young athletes who experienced repetitive head impacts (RHI) and compare findings to those of young individuals not exposed to RHI. “This work,” says McKee, “aims to help explain how white matter changes arising from repetitive head impacts lead to serious morbidity, including death. It has the potential to dramatically alter the way American football is played and neuropsychiatric illness is diagnosed.”

The Mac Parkman Foundation was established by the family of Mac Parkman, a football player and wrestler who died by suicide at age 17 in 2020. After his death, his family donated his brain for study by McKee, who confirmed brain pathology consistent with her findings in older athletes. Mac’s father, Bruce Parkman, wants other parents to know the risks their children face by participating in sports that involve repetitive hits to the head. “Our family didn’t know that these sports were literally killing Mac,” says Parkman. “We’re supporting this research so others don’t need to suffer the way he did— and so other families have information about the risks of certain sports. We truly believe this research will save lives.”

● Chan Zuckerburg Funds Initiative to Improve SingleCell Genomic Data

Joshua Campbell, PhD, assistant professor of computational biomedicine, has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. With this support, he will develop methods and software to improve the quality of single-cell genomic data.

Single-cell technologies can generate intricate data on complex biological systems. Although they have many advantages, the insights gained from this data can be hindered by different types of noise, such as contamination that comes from dead or dying cells. With support from this grant, Campbell will develop novel statistical approaches for estimating and removing contamination from single-cell data modalities, such as RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, and CITE-seq. He also will extend software that allows for benchmarking and comparisons between different decontamination tools.

Campbell plans to make these algorithms and tools available online, enabling noncomputational users to easily run and evaluate decontamination tools on their own data. “This work will enhance the ability of researchers to gain meaningful insights from their single-cell data, even in cases where higher levels of contamination are present,” he says.

● Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation Funds Cancer Research in Pediatric Neuroblastoma

Hui Feng, MD, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology & experimental therapeutics, has been awarded a $250,000 Innovation Grant from Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF).

ALSF’s Innovation Grant program supports research likely to have a significant and sustained impact on the childhood cancer research field. With this support, Feng will investigate why MYCN-driven cancers are aggressive and treatmentresistant in the context of neuroblastoma.

Children with high-risk neuroblastoma often have extra copies of MYCN, which can result in increased disease aggression and a less-than-50-percent survival rate. Combining analysis of human patient samples and in-vitro cell culture systems with an innovative zebrafish model, Feng has found that T regulatory cells are enriched into the tumor microenvironment to suppress anti-tumor immune responses and promote tumor aggression in MYCNdriven neuroblastoma. In this project, Feng will shed light on the underlying mechanisms and evaluate available drugs for improved treatment.

“This study could uncover effective drugs for treating high-risk neuroblastoma and perhaps other types of MYCN-driven pediatric cancers,” says Feng. “These treatments could be much less toxic than chemotherapy and radiation for children.”

● American Heart Association Supports Continued Research on Racial Disparities

Katya Ravid, DSc, Barbara E. Corkey Professor of Medicine, received a grant from the American Heart Association to study cardiovascular complications, as influenced by health inequities, in breast and prostate cancer survivors.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in cancer survivors who haven’t experienced recurrence, and Black survivors of breast and prostate cancers appear to be at disproportionately higher risk for heart damage.

Ravid and her research team hypothesize that this disparity is at least partially due to “allostatic load”—broadly defined as the biological burden of chronic stress attributed to socioeconomic conditions and other stressors and associated with worse health outcomes.

Using a large dataset, Ravid and her collaborators, who include researchers from VA Boston Healthcare and Boston Medical Center (including Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Associate Professor Vipul Chitalia, MD, PhD), will investigate impacts of well-defined parameters of allostatic load on various manifestations of cardiovascular disease in breast and prostate cancer survivors across racial groups. They also will compare intensity of allostatic load with biological response to cancer treatment. “This study,” says Ravid, “will help us understand why some populations of cancer survivors disproportionately endure cardiovascular complications—and how we may be able to prevent or lessen disease.” ●