Medical center announces new round of faculty promotions

By JOYCE THOMAS

Ellen Jo Baron, PhD, was promoted to professor of pathology at the medical center. She directs the Stanford clinical microbiology/virology lab. Her work focuses on clinical microbiology and its application to patient care. She has served on the editorial boards of the major journals in her field including the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Diseases and Clinical Infectious Diseases. She is volume editor for microbiology of the Manual of Clinical Microbiology.

At Stanford she received the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine Kenneth L. Vosti, MD, Teaching Award in 2003. She serves on the Stanford Infection Control Committee and the medical center disaster committee and Bioterrorism & Emergency Preparedness Planning Task Force. Baron received her PhD in medical microbiology in 1981 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and trained in clinical microbiology and laboratory medicine at UCLA. She joined Stanford in 1997.

Charles DeBattista, MD, was promoted to associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the medical center. Since 1995 he has directed the Depression Research and Psychopharmacology Clinics in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and has served as chief of the electroconvulsive therapy service. He has achieved national recognition as an authority on the biological treatment of depression. His current research focuses on the treatment of severe and resistant depression and increasing treatment options.

He was named Academic Teacher of the Year three times by his department and has been cited by the Committee on Courses and Curriculum for excellence in medical student teaching. He obtained his doctorate in mental health in 1986 and his medical degree in 1989 from UC-San Francisco. He completed a psychiatry residency and a psychopharmacology fellowship at Stanford. DeBattista joined the faculty in 1996.

Abby King, PhD, was promoted to professor of health research and policy and of medicine. Her research involves bio-behavioral factors that influence chronic disease prevention and control especially among minority populations, women, the elderly and elderly caregivers. Since 1992 she has co-directed the National Heart Lung Blood Institute pre- and postdoctoral fellowship training program in chronic disease epidemiology and prevention at Stanford. She is an elected member of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. In 2003 she received the Society of Behavioral Medicine’s Distinguished Scientific Mentor Award.

King obtained a PhD in clinical psychology from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg (Va.) in 1983. She completed a residency in clinical psychology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and an NIH fellowship at Stanford. She joined the SCRDP as a research associate in 1985 and received an appointment to the faculty in 1992. She was promoted to associate professor, with tenure, in 1998.

Thomas Robinson, MD, was promoted to associate professor of pediatrics and of medicine, with tenure. His work focuses on pediatric preventive research, especially relating to obesity. His studies examine behavioral and environmental interventions to prevent obesity, as well as diabetes and smoking. His article "Reducing children’s television viewing to prevent obesity: a randomized controlled trial," published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was named the most significant pediatric study of the year by Contemporary Pediatrics in 2000.

He serves as attending in general pediatrics and directs the Stanford pediatric weight-control program. Robinson received an MPH from UC-Berkeley in 1987 and his MD from Stanford in 1988. He completed a pediatrics residency at Children’s Hospital, Boston, and returned to Stanford for postdoctoral training. He received a faculty appointment in 1996.

Edith V. Sullivan, PhD, was promoted to professor (research) of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. Her work involves the study of brain structural and functional mechanisms disrupted in aging, alcoholism and neuropsychiatric diseases including schizophrenia. Her research has revealed different patterns of memory impairment in patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. It has explained selective neuropsychological defects and their brain structural substrates associated with chronic alcoholism, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia, as well as progressive neurodegenerative loss of grey matter in schizophrenia.

She received her doctorate in 1975 from the University of Connecticut and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT. In 1988 she became a senior research associate in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and was appointed to the faculty in 1994.

Andrew Zolopa, MD, was promoted to associate professor of medicine (infectious diseases and geographic medicine) at the medical center. His work focuses on the clinical care of patients infected with HIV. In 1994 he established the Stanford Positive Care Clinic. Zolopa has a national reputation in the field of AIDS research. He published a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine that demonstrated the capacity of HIV-genotype testing in predicting virologic outcomes for patients receiving antiretroviral therapy.

He is a member of the NIH AIDS Clinical Trial Group HIV Disease Research Agenda Committee, which sets the agenda for the major clinical trials. He received his medical degree in 1984 from UCLA. He joined the faculty in 1997. In 2001 Zolopa was appointed clinical chief of the division of infectious diseases in the Department of Medicine.