Felicia Axelrod, M.D.
Carl Seaman Family Professor of Dysautonomia Treatment and Reserach, Pediatrics
Professor of Neurology

Felicia B. Axelrod, M.D. is the Carl Seaman Family Professor for Dysautonomia Treatment and Research in the Department of Pediatrics and Professor of Neurology at New York University School of Medicine.

Dr. Axelrod completed her undergraduate training at Skidmore College and then entered New York University School of Medicine. Her training in Pediatrics was at NYU- Bellevue, and a year of Genetics fellowship was at Mount Sinai. Since 1969, she has been the Director of the Dysautonomia Treatment and Evaluation Center at NYU Medical Center, where she has concentrated on clinical research pertaining to the genetic disorder familial dysautonomia. Through her clinical research and publications, Dr. Axelrod has achieved international recognition for her expertise in the treatment and care of FD patients and other developmental autonomic and sensory neuropathies. Largely through her efforts, FD is now better understood, and treatment programs have been devised which have greatly benefited FD patients and their parents. She is now President-elect of the American Autonomic Society, serves as a reviewer for various journals, and is an Editorial Board Member of Clinical Autonomic Research.

In addition to the above commitments, Dr Axelrod's involvement with the NYU school of Medicine remains very important; she participates on a number of committees and organizations related to medical school and hospital activities. She is Chairperson of the Social Service Committee and head of the Child Abuse sub-committee. She is a member of the NYU Medical School admission and curriculum committees, and was a director of the Faculty Advisor Group from 1992-99. She is also active in the NYU Medical School Alumni Association and served as Vice President in 1994-95 and President in 1995-96. Her honors include election to the Delta Chapter AOA as faculty-alumni member in 1990 and receiving the 1998 NYU School of Medicine Solomon A. Berson Medical Alumni Achievement Award in Health Science.

Martin J. Blaser, M.D.
Frederick H. King Professor of Internal Medicine
Chairman of the Department of Medicine
Professor of Microbiology

Martin J. Blaser, M.D. is the Frederick H. King Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology at the New York University School of Medicine. Before arriving at NYU, he was on the faculty of Vanderbilt University where he was the Addison B. Scoville Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases, as well as Professor of Microbiology and Immunology.

Dr. Blaser is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Economics, and of the NYU School of Medicine. After completing a Residency in Internal Medicine, and a Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado, Dr. Blaser served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Control in the Enteric Diseases Branch. Over the course of his career, he has been a Guest Investigator at Rockefeller University, Professeur Invite (three times) at Institut Pasteur (Paris), and Visiting Researcher at the National Cancer Center (Tokyo).

The study of bacteria, the most ancient life-forms on earth, and the most diverse and numerous, has formed the core of his investigative pursuits, and his research has centered on the role of bacteria in human diseases. Current research examines the evolution of bacterial phenotypes, development of mathematical models and molecular genetics. He has explored the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, especially illnesses related to the Campylobacter and Helicobacter species. His work has employed the disciplines of clinical medicine, epidemology, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and mathematics. His studies, involving more than 50 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, have formed the basis for more than 300 original publications. One hypothesis that he has advanced is that many of the chronic inflammatory diseases of unknown cause are due at least in part to microbes, especially bacteria.

Jo Ivey Boufford, M.D.
Dean and Professor of Public Administration
Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
Clinical Professor of Pediatrics

Jo Ivey Boufford, M.D. was appointed Dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University on June 1, 1997. Prior to that, she served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from November 1993 to January 1997, and as Acting Assistant Secretary from January 1997 to May 1997. While at HHS, she served as the U.S. representative on the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) from 1994-1997 and was re-appointed to this position by in May 1998.

From May 1991 to September 1993, Dr. Boufford served as Director of the King's Fund College, London England. She served as President of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), the largest municipal system in the United States, from December 1985 until October 1989. She was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine in 1992. She received her BA (Psychology) magna cum laude from the University of Michigan and her M.D. with distinction from the University of Michigan Medical School. She is Board Certified in pediatrics.

Saul J. Farber, M.D.
Professor of Medicine
Former Dean, New York University School of Medicine

Dr. Farber is the Principal Investigator of the NIH grant that funds the General Clinical Research Center. Medical Education: NYU School of Medicine, 1942 Residency Training: Goldwater Memorial Hospital (Medicine) 1946-1947; Bellevue Hospital Center (Medicine) 1947-1948 Clinical Fellowships: NYU Medical Center (Nephrology) 1948-1949 Board Certifications: Internal Medicine Medical Specialty: Nephrology Prior Responsibilities: Dr. Farber was Dean of the School of Medicine and Provost of NYU Medical Center until his resignation at the end of the 1996-97 academic year.

Irwin M. Freedberg, M.D.
George Miller MacKee Professor of Dermatology
Chairman of the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology
Professor of Biology

Irwin M. Freedberg is the Chairman of the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology at NYU School of Medicine, the George Miller MacKee Professor of Dermatology and a Professor of Cell Biology. Prior to joining the NYU faculty in July 1981, Dr. Freedberg had been on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School where he achieved the rank of Professor of Dermatology and on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, where he served as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Dermatology.

Educated at Dartmouth College and the Harvard Medical School, Dr. Freedberg trained in Medicine at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and in Dermatology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He has served fellowships in the Graduate Department of Biochemistry at Brandeis University and, during a period as a Guggenheim Fellow, in the Department of Biophysics of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Dr. Freedberg's research efforts, which have been funded by the NIH since 1961, are focused upon the proteins of mammalian epidermis and they have led to his clinical focus on diseases of keratinization. His teaching throughout his career has paralleled these interests, focusing on the interrelationships among scientific progress and clinical medicine.

Dr. Freedberg is the author of many clinical and research publications and is currently the senior editor of the major American textbook of dermatology, Dermatology in General Medicine. He has served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology and has held the presidency of many organizations including the Society for Investigative Dermatology, the American Board of Dermatology, the Association of Professors of Dermatology and the American Dermatologic Association. His honors include the Rothman Medal of the Society for Investigative Dermatology and the Carter Mentorship Award of the American Skin Association. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Philip Furmanski, Ph.D.
Professor and Chairman, Department of Biology
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
New York University

Philip Furmanski is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biology at New York University. He also holds an appointment at NYU's School of Medicine as Professor of Pathology, and is a member of the School's Cancer center and the Center for AIDS Research. Professor Furmanski served from 1993to 1994 as Interim Dean of the NYU College of Arts and Sciences, and from January 1995 to December 1998 as Interim and then permanent Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science.

Author of over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and over 100 other published contributions and presentations, Prof. Furmanski is a cell biologist with research interests focused on the analysis of the interactions between tumors and their hosts. These studies range from basic molecular biological experiments, to identify the mediators of these effects and their mechanisms, to preclinical and clinical trials of the potential use of these mediators in cancer treatment. Prof. Furmanski has held numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health and other agencies and organizations. He served for many years on NIH review panels and study sections, including the Pathology B Study Section and the NIH Cancer Biology and Immunology Contracts Review Committee, which he also chaired, and other similar appointments. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Cancer Research, The American Journal of Pathology, Cancer Letters, and other professional journals.

Prof. Furmanski received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Temple University, and has held appointments at Dartmouth Medical School, the Michigan Cancer Foundation, the AMC Cancer Research Center, Wayne State University School of Medicine, and the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Lewis R. Goldfrank, M.D.
Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine
Director, Emergency Medicine
Bellevue Hospital

Lewis R. Goldfrank, M.D. has been the Director of Emergency Medicine at Bellevue Hospital Center and New York University Medical Center for the past 20 years. He is also the Medical Director of the New York City Health Department's Poison Center. Educated at Clark University, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of Brussels, Belgium; he graduated from the University of Brussels, Medical School in 1970. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center in 1973.

His efforts have led to the development of NYU's Emergency Medicine and Medical Toxicology residencies. He has served as the Chairman of American Board of Emergency Medicine's subboard on Medical Toxicology, the American Board of Medical Toxicology and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. His entire career has been spent working in the public hospitals of New York City emphasizing the role of Emergency Medicine in improving access to care, public health, public policy and medical humanism. He has worked on the use of antidotes and management of the poisoned and overdosed patients with a particular focus on the toxicology of cocaine, heroin, ethanol and botanicals.

He has studied, lectured and published extensively on the care of the disenfranchised, biochemical weapons, thermoregulatory emergencies, immigrant healthcare, medical ethics and health care reform. He has assisted in numerous projects in South America, Asia and Europe in the advancement of Emergency Medicine and Medical Toxicology emphasizing his interests in the improvement of Global Health.

He is the editor of "Goldfrank's Toxicologic Emergencies," currently in its sixth edition, published by Appleton & Lange. He is also author of "Emergency Doctor" published by Harper and Row. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine in 1996.

Rochelle Hirschhorn, M.D.
Professor of Medicine and Cell Biology

Dr. Hirschhorn has been an Attending in Medicine at Bellevue Hospital since 1980, and an Attending in Medicine at Tisch Hospital since1981. Since 1984 she has been Chief of the Division of Medical Genetics in the Department of Medicine. Medical Education: Dr. Hirschhorn received her M.D. degree from New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, in 1957. Internship: Dr. Hirschhorn began her internship in the IV Medical Division at NYU- Bellevue in 1958-1959. She was Postdoctoral Training: Research Fellow and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Medicine at NYU Medical Center from 1963-1965. She was an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Medicine, 1965-1966 Research Interests: Molecular Pathology of Inherited Diseases

Alexandra L. Joyner, Ph.D.
Skirball Foundation Professor of Genetics
Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology and Neuroscience

Dr. Joyner is a Professor of Cell Biology and of Physiology and Neuroscience, New York University School of Medicine. She is also the Skirball Endowed Professor of Genetics and graduate advisor for the Developmental Genetics Program. Dr. Joyner has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997. She was a Medical Research Council of Canada Scholar (1987-1992) and Scientist (1992-1994) and an HHMI International Scholar (1991-1994). She has been a managing editor of "Mechanisms of Development" since 1995.

A native Canadian, Dr. Joyner received her B.Sc. in Zoology and Ph.D. in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto. During her undergraduate studies she became interested in developmental genetics and her PhD research involved making some of the first retroviral vectors as an approach for gene therapy and to study stem cells in the haematopoietic system of mice. From 1983-1986, Dr. Joyner was a Medical Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Gail Martin at UCSF. She began her genetic studies of early development of the nervous system by cloning some of the first mammalian developmental control genes using homology to recently cloned fruit fly homeobox developmental genes. During 1986-1994 Dr. Joyner was a senior scientist in the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto, and went from assistant to full Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of Toronto. She was a graduate advisor for her last two years in Toronto. In 1994 Dr. Joyner joined the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine of New York University School of Medicine as Coordinator of the a Developmental Genetics Program. She was instrumental in building the program to its current size of 8 research laboratories with more than 80 research staff. Together with Dr. Ruth Lehmann, they founded a new graduate program in Developmental Genetics that is jointly run with faculty from the Biology Department of NYU.

Dr. Joyner is known for her work on the early genetic control of formation of the midbrain and cerebellum and for pioneering genetic approaches in mouse that have allowed for the development of mouse models of human diseases. Her interests also include later development and patterning of the cerebellum, the role of the Gli genes in development and cancer, and transcriptional regulation of a number of key developmental genes.

H. Sherwood Lawrence, M.D.
Jeffrey Bergstein Professor of Medicine

Mack Lipkin, Jr., M.D.
Professor of Clinical Medicine

Mack Lipkin, Jr., M.D. is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of Primary Care Internal Medicine at New York University School of Medicine, Founding President of the American Academy on Physician and Patient, Vice-Chairman and Vice-President of the Psychiatric Education in Primary Care Alliance and he was President of the Society of General Internal Medicine in 1992-93. He directs the Residency Education Program in Primary Care Internal Medicine, chaired the Generalist Initiative at NYU and chairs the Physician, Patient, and Society thematic content development group. He is President of the Zlinkoff Fund for Medical Education and Research.

Dr. Lipkin has written or edited eleven books and authored over 130 articles and chapters on the medical interview and encounter, doctor-patient relationship, and psychosocial and psychiatric issues in Primary Care. He is internationally recognized as a leader in Primary Care and talks, writes, researches, and consults internationally. Among his numerous honors and awards are the Rosenthal Award of The American College of Physicians and at NYU the Dean's Citation for Medical Education.

Dr. Lipkin is Principal Investigator of the Macy Initiative in Health Communication, a three-school four-year study of education in humanism, medical interviewing, and related issues. The Lipkin Model, which he developed, uses simultaneous teaching of knowledge, skills, and attitudes in intensive workshop formats that have been demonstrated to change knowledge, skills, attitudes, and enduring behavioral patterns of students, residents, and practitioners. The model has been adopted for teaching of the doctor patient relationship, the medical interview, pain, alcoholism, cancer care, end of life care, teaching, and personal awareness of physicians.

Rodolfo Llinas, M.D., Ph.D.
Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience
Chairman of the Department of Physiology and Neuroscience

Dr. Rodolfo Llin�s has served as the Chairman of the Department of Physiology and Neuroscience since 1976 and has been the Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience, at New York University School of Medicine since 1985. He received his medical degree from the Universidad Javeriana (Bogota, Colombia) and his Ph.D. in Neurophysiology from the Australian National University (Canberra, Australia). He trained as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, Stanley Cobb Laboratory and the Department of Physiology at the University of Minnesota. He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) since 1986, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Professor Llin�s has contributed over 500 publications to brain research, has been awarded six honorary degrees and is the recipient of numerous honors.

Dr. Llinas' research encompasses many aspects of neuroscience from the study of depolarization release coupling in the squid giant synapse, to voltage-dependent calcium channels from cerebellar neurons. He is interested in global brain function and is presently studying the functional organization of neuronal ensembles in rodents using multiple electrode recordings in vivo and magnetic recordings in humans using magnetoencephalography (MEG) technique.

Jerome Lowenstein, M.D.
Professor of Medicine

I was graduated from New York University (BA) in 1953 and received my M.D. degree from the New York University School of Medicine in 1957.

After an internship at Montefiore Hospital, I spent two years at the Gerontology Branch of the National Institutes of Health, where I studied the changes in glomerular permeability with age, by measuring hemoglobin clearance in healthy men ranging in age from 30 to 80 years.

I returned to NYU Medical Center as a medical resident in 1960. I was Chief Resident on the Psychiatric-Medical service in 1961-62, and senior Chief Resident in Medicine in 1962- 63. These years, with the opportunity and responsibility for teaching students and house staff, gave me my first taste of the satisfaction and excitement of teaching.

Following my medical residency, I held fellowships from the US Public Health Service and the New York Heart Association and undertook studies of the renal hemodynamic changes which might be responsible for essential hypertension. My investigations carried me from clearance studies and measurements of intrarenal hydrostatic pressure in man, to studies of the role of the renin-angiotensin system in the regulation of aldosterone secretion in man and rabbits.

I am presently Co-Director of the Nephrology Division, Professor of Medicine, and a Firm Chief in the Department of Medicine. I have become increasingly interested in the process of educating medical students and young physicians. In 1979 I initiated the program for Humanistic Aspects of Medical Education, which involves small group meetings for third- year medical students during their clerkship in Medicine and all of the house staff during their rotations through the Medical ICU and the AIDS unit. In 1995, I became co-course director of the Doctor and Patient component of the Behavioral Science course for first-year students.

I spend much of my vacation time writing. Acid and Basics: A Guide to Understanding Acid-Base Physiology was published by Oxford University Press in 1993, and The Midnight Meal and Other Essays About Doctors, Patients, and Medicine was published by Yale University Press in the spring of 1997.

Ruth S. Nussenzweig, M.D., Ph.D.
Starr Professor and Chairman of Medical and Molecular Parisitology

Ruth S. Nussenzweig, M.D., Ph.D., the C.V. Starr Professor, has been the first chair of the Department of Medical and Molecular Parasitology. Rut and he husband have made seminal discoveries which have laid the foundation for the development of a vaccine to prevent malaria, one of the most virulent challenges to human health, threatening nearly half the world's population. The laboratories of Drs. Nussenzweig at NYU were the first to demonstrate that irradiated malaria sporozoites elicit complete protection against malaria in mice and monkeys. This was later confirmed by others also in humans, demonstrating vaccine feasibility. Ruth and Victor Nussenzweig have developed several prototype malaria vaccines. Their synthetic vaccine was the first malaria vaccine shown to protect some human volunteers challenged with mosquitoes infected with Plasmodium falciparum, cause of the most severe forms of malaria. It was also the first vaccine against a parasitic disease of humans.

Ruth Nussenzweig has received numerous awards from national and international organizations. As a medical student, she performed research which demonstrated that Chagas disease could be transmitted by blood transfusion, causing an acute, sever, even lethal infection. She identified a safe trypanocidal agent, gentian violet, which abolished the infectivity of blood stages of the parasite. This approach continues to be used in areas of highly prevalent asymptomatic Chagas disease in South and Central America.

In their most important work, Ruth and Victor Nussenzweig, and their fellows, have established the experimental basis for a malaria vaccine. Based on their studies, a malaria vaccine has been tried successfully by investigators at the Walter Reed Institute in a small number of human volunteers in the U.S., Europe, and, recently, the Gambia.

Ruth is responsible for the course in Parasitic Diseases for medical students. She has trained numerous fellows from the U.S., as well as from numerous developing countries. Several of her fellows have gone on to become professors and/or heads of departments in the U.S. or their countries of origin.

William Ruddick, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
New York University

William Ruddick (M.A. Oxford, Ph.D. Harvard) is Professor of Philosophy, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, and Co-director of the Philosophy and Medicine Program at New York University. In addition to editing Philosophers in Medical Centers and Having Children: Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Parenthood (with O.O'Neill), he has written on topics in philosophy of science, moral psychology, family ethics, and medical ethics. His most recent essays include: "Do doctors undertreat pain?" (Bioethics 1997); "Hope and deception" (Bioethics 1999); and "Ways to limit prenatal testing" in Prenatal Testing for Disability, eds. E.Parens & A. Asch (in press). His current work is on optimism and hope in medical reasoning and on the bearing of family desires on physicians' brain death and PVS decisions. These essays are part of a larger work on often unrecognized conceptual between physicians and patients or their families. He has chaired the Philosophy Department and the Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs. He has also taught at MIT, Dartmouth, and Haverford, as well as lecturing widely abroad.

David D. Sabatini, M.D., Ph.D.
Frederick L. Ehrman Professor and Chairman of Cell Biology

Dr. Sabatini was born in Bolivar, Argentina. He obtained his medical degree from the University of Litoral in Argentina in 1954 and started his scientific career in 1956 in the laboratory of Professor Eduardo de Robertis, a pioneer electron microscopist and cell biologist at the School of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires. In 1960, Dr. Sabatini obtained a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to come to the U.S. where he undertook postdoctoral training, first at Yale University School of Medicine and later at the Rockefeller University. While at Yale he introduced the glutaraldehyde fixation procedure for the preservation of subcellular structures that is now widely used in cytochemical and electron microscopic studies. In 1966, he was awarded a Ph.D. from Rockefeller University, where he remained as a faculty member in the Laboratory of Cell Biology headed by Dr. George Palade. During this period, he carried out studies on membrane- bound ribosomes which constituted the basis for the "signal hypothesis" that explains the cotranslational insertion of specific classes of nascent polypeptides into endoplasmic reticulum membranes.

In 1972, Dr. Sabatini became Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology at the New York University School of Medicine where he continued to investigate protein trafficking mechanisms, extending his work from the functions of the endoplasmic reticulum to the role of the Golgi apparatus in organelle and plasma membrane biogenesis. At NYU, Dr. Sabatini and his associates developed a system of cultured polarized kidney- derived epithelial cells (MDCK) which now serves as a common paradigm to study the physiological properties of transporting epithelia. Using this system they also discovered the polarized budding of enveloped viruses from epithelial cells. These studies provided the preeminent model currently used to investigate membrane protein sorting and plasma membrane biogenesis.

A member of several editorial boards and reviewer (past and present) of scientific journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Journal of Cell Biology, Journal of Cellular Biochemistry, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Biology of the Cell, and Current Opinion in Cell Biology (Membranes), he has authored more than 120 scientific publications. Dr. Sabatini is also the recipient of several scientific and teaching awards, including The Samuel Roberts Noble Research Recognition Award (1980), the E.B. Wilson Award of the American Society for Cell Biology (1986), the Charles Leopold Meyer Grand Prix of the French Academy of Sciences (1989), the Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology (2000), and the New York University Distinguished Teaching Medal (2000). He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and of the American Philosophical Society. He is also a Foreign Associate of the Academie des Sciences (France), and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The American Academy of Microbiology, The New York Academy of Sciences, and The Third World of Academy of Sciences.

His administrative responsibilities in different societies or organizations (past and present) include the American Society for Cell Biology (President: 1978-79), New York Society for Electron Microscopy (President: 1971), Harvey Society (President: 1986-87), and the Chairmanship of the Cellular and Developmental Biology Section of the National Academy of Sciences (USA). Dr. Sabatini has also served, or is currently serving, in several scientific advisory boards and committees of granting and philanthropic organizations, including the National Institutes of Health (USA), Irma T. Hirschl Charitable Trust, Public Health Research Institute of New York City, Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund, Searle Scholars Program, The Lita Annenberg Hazen Awards Committee, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Advisory Committee for Open Professorships, Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, National Research Council (USA), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Pew International Fellows Program, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Human Frontiers of Science Program, Institut Curie, Institut d'Embryologie Cellulaire et Mol�culaire (Coll�ge de France), and Institut Pasteur, Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, Ernst Klenk Foundation, Richard Lounsbery Foundation, and Schlumberger Foundation.

Dr. Sabatini's scientific interests continue to lie in the areas of protein traffic and membrane and organelle biogenesis.

Benjamin James Sadock, M.D.
Menas A. Gregory Professor of Psychiatry

Benjamin James Sadock, M.D. is currently a professor and vice chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the New York University (NYU) School of Medicine. He graduated from Union College in 1955 and received his M.D. from New York Medical College in 1959.

After an internship at Albany Hospital, he completed his residency at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital and then entered military service, where he served as Assistant Chief and Acting Chief of Neuropsychiatry at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas. He held faculty and teaching appointments at Southwestern Medical School and Parkland Hospital in Dallas and at New York Medical College, St. Luke's Hospital, the Residency Training Program in Psychiatry, and director of Graduate Medical Education. Since 1980, Dr. Sadock has been director of Student Mental Health Services, psychiatric consultant to the Admissions Committee, and codirector of Continuing Education in Psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine. He is on the staff of Bellevue Hospital and Tisch Hospital (the University Hospital of the NYU Medical Center) and is consultant psychiatrist at Lenox Hill Hospital.

Dr. Sadock became a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 1966 and served as an assistant and associate examiner for the Board for over a decade. He is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the American College of Physicians, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He is also a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. He is active in numerous psychiatric organizations and is president and founder of the NYU-Bellevue Psychiatric Society.

Dr. Sadock was a member of the National Committee on Continuing Education in Psychiatry of the American Psychiatric Association, served on the Ad Hoc Committee on Sex Therapy Clinics of the American Medical Association, was delegate to the Conference on Recertification of the American Board of Medical Specialists, and was representative of the American Psychiatric Association Task Force on the National Board of Medical Examiners and the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. In 1985 he received the Academic Achievement Award from New York Medical College. He is author or editor of more than 100 publications, including the books listed here, and is a book reviewer for psychiatric journals.

He is married to Virginia Alcott Sadock, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Graduate Education in Human Sexuality at NYU Medical Center. They live in Manhattan and have an active private practice specializing in individual psychotherapy, group therapy, sex and marital therapy, and pharmacotherapy. They have two children James and Victoria. Dr. Sadock is an opera lover, a skier and an avid fly-fisherman.

Matthew S. Santirocco, Ph.D.
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
Professor of Classics
Director of the Center for Ancient Studies
New York University

Matthew S. Santirocco is the Dean of the College of Arts and Science, Professor of Classics, and Angelo J. Ranieri Director of Ancient Studies at New York University. Before arriving at NYU in July 1994, he was on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was Professor and Chair of Classical Studies, and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Santirocco was educated at Columbia and Cambridge Universities. He has taught not only at NYU and Penn, but also at the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia, Emory, and Brown Universities. He is the author of a book on Latin lyric poetry (Unity and Design in Horace's Odes), of an edited volume of essays on the classical tradition (Latinitas: The Tradition and Teaching of Latin), and of many scholarly articles. He is currently working on a book about the poetics of patronage in Augustan Rome. He was the editor of the American Philological Association's two monograph series, American Classical Studies and Philological Monographs, and is currently the editor of Classical World, one of the most widely circulated professional journals in the field. He has also served as Vice President for Professional Matters for the American Philological Association.

Dr. Santirocco's teaching ranges widely and includes courses on Latin literature, Greek poetry, mythology, and the classical tradition. In addition, at Penn he developed humanities curricula in the MBA and Executive Education Programs of the Wharton School, including a course he team-taught with a Japanologist, "Cultural Constructions of �East' and �West.'" At NYU he helped to design a new core curriculum, the Morse Academic Plan. Through NYU's Center for Ancient Studies, which he founded and directs, he has promoted the development of interdisciplinary courses, annual conferences and colloquia, and summer outreach seminars for faculty from throughout the United States. Dr. Santirocco also has an interest in secondary education, and has directed two NEH Seminars for School Teachers and participated in a year-long NEH Masterworks grant.

Frank C. Spencer, M.D.
George David Stewart Professor of Surgery

Frank Spencer is professor of Surgery at New York University School of Medicine, an appointment starting in 1966. His entire academic career, starting in 1955, after completion of surgical residency training at Johns Hopkins, has been in academic medical centers. He was consecutively on the surgical faculty at Johns Hopkins for six years (1955-1961), Professor of Surgery at the University of Kentucky (1961-1966), and then Chairman of Surgery at New York University for 33 years (1966-1998). He resigned his Chairmanship to accept a major full-time administrative position bridging our new hospital consortium between Mount Sinai and New York University.

Teaching has always been a major priority, working actively with students, house staff, faculty, and national surgical associations. He started the weekly Surgical Mortality- Morbidity Conference at Bellevue and conducted the majority of these over three decades. The room was recently renovated and officially named in his honor.

He was honored with the Distinguished Teaching Award by the Medical School graduating classes of both 1969 and 1970, and later received the University's Great Teacher Award in 1977. In 1984 he was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. For over three decades Dr. Spencer has taught weekly, both with third-year medical students and with house staff.

His bibliography includes over 300 publications and four textbooks. He was a founding editor of the popular Schwartz's Principles of Surgery, now in its seventh edition. He was also a co-editor of Gibbon's Surgery of the Chest, now in its sixth edition.

Nationally, Dr. Spencer has been President of the three premier surgical organizations, The American College of Surgeons, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, and the American Surgical Association. Despite his busy administrative duties, he continues his active teaching career, meeting with third-year students weekly and making weekly rounds in the Intensive Care Unit.

Norton Spritz, M.D., J.D.
Professor of Medicine

Dr. Spritz joined the NYU faculty in 1969 as Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Medical Service at the New York Veterans Administration Hospital. He was elected to the major research and academic medical societies and served as President of the New York State Chapter of the American College of Physicians, the Interurban Clinical Society, The Association of VA Chiefs of Medicine, and Medical Advisory Committee of the Juvenile Diabetes Association.

In 1983, Dr. Spritz's professional focus changed to issues of law and medicine and to policy issues in medicine. This interest was fueled by the discrimination and other legal problems of the large number of AIDS patients seen at the NYU Medical Center early in the epidemic. He attended the Evening School at Fordham University Law School while continuing as Chief of Medicine and was awarded the JD Degree in 1987. He spent a short Sabbatical at the Hastings Center for Biomedical Ethics and continues there as an Adjunct Scholar.

He has served as a Consultant to the Governor's Task Force on Health and the Law; on the Department of Veterans Affairs Ethics Committee; and became a member of the Office of Professional Conduct for New York State. In 1997 he was appointed to the newly developed position as Chief Forensic Officer of the VA.

He was appointed as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Fordham University School of Law where he taught a course entitled "Law and End of Life Medical Decisions" in the Fall, 1999 semester and is scheduled to teach it again in Fall, 2000. He is a Medical Coordinator at the New York State Office of Professional Conduct and consultant to the New York Academy of Medicine's institute for Urban Bioethics.

Jan T. Vilcek, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Microbiology

Education: Comenius University Medical School, Bratislava; MD, 1957 Institute of Virology, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, C.Sc. (equivalent to Ph.D.), 1962

Current Position: 1973-present: Professor of Microbiology, New York University School of Medicine

Honors: Recognition Award, Japanese Inflammation Society, 1989 Outstanding Investigator Grant, National Cancer Institute, 1991 Elliot Osserman Award in Cancer Research, 1996

Current Editorial Activities: Associate Editor, Journal of Interferon and Cytokine Research, 1980-present Associate Editor, Journal of Immunological Methods, 1986-present Editorial Board member, Journal of Cellular Physiology, 1988-present Advisory Editorial Board member, Cytokine, 1989-present Editorial Board member, Acta Virologica, 1991-present Editorial Board member, Folia Biologica (Prague), 1993-present Editorial Board member, Cytokines, Cellular&Molecular Therapy, 1998-present Editor-in-Chief, Cytokine and Growth Factor Reviews, 1995-present

Membership of Professional Societies: American Society for Microbiology American Association for the Advancement of Science (Fellow) American Association of Immunologists International Society for Interferon and Cytokine Research Czech Immunological Society International Cytokine Society (President 1997-98) Czechoslovak Society for Microbiology

Gerald Weissmann, M.D.
Professor of Medicine

Gerald Weissmann, M.D. is Professor of Medicine and since 1973 has been director of the division of rheumatology at New York University Medical Center. He was educated at Columbia College and at New York University, where he obtained his medical degree in the class of 1954. He was an intern and chief resident at Mount Sinai Hospital, a captain in the US Army Medical Corps and became Lewis Thomas's chief medical resident at Bellevue Hospital. He did postdoctoral work in biochemistry at NYU with Severo Ochoa, and served his second postdoctoral fellowship at the Strangeways Research Laboratory in Cambridge with Dame Honor Fell. He has also worked at the H�pital St. Antoine, in Paris, and at the William Harvey Research Laboratory in London with Sir John Vane. Since 1970 he has spent summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole where he has been an instructor in the Immunology and Physiology courses. He has received many awards including the Lila Gruber Award for Cancer Research, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Rockefeller Foundation residencies at Bellagio, the Allesandro Robecchi International Prize for Rheumatology, the Distinguished Investigator Award of the American College of Rheumatology, and the Paul Klemperer Medal of the NY Academy of Medicine. He has given centenary lectures at the MBL and at Johns Hopkins, been elected a Fellow of the AAAS, a Fellow of the PEN American Center and a trusteee of the Marine Biological Laboratory. A past president of the American College of Rheumatology and the Harvey Society, Dr. Weissmann is editor-in-chief of Inflammation. His research has focussed on the cell biology of neutrophils and inflammation; he has also studied anti-inflammatory drugs with an emphasis on their effects upon lipid remodelling and eicosanoid release. Based on his 1965 co-discovery of liposomes with Alec Bangham, he was a founder -with EC Whitehead - of The Liposome Company of Princeton. His essays and reviews of cultural history have been published in The New Republic, The London Review of Books , The New York Times Book Review and have been collected in six volumes, from The Woods Hole Cantata (1985) to Darwin�s Audubon (1998). At present he is writing the biography of Lewis Thomas.