Stanford Report, January 25, 2006

Medical Center People

Paul Heidenreich, MD, has been promoted to associate professor of medicine as of Nov. 1. His research focuses on the cost-effectiveness of new cardiovascular technologies; interventions to improve the quality of care of patients with heart disease; outcomes research using existing clinical and administrative data-sets, and the use of echocardiography to predict prognosis.

Richard Olshen, PhD, professor of health research & policy and, by courtesy, of statistics and of electrical engineering, has been named a fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The fellowship is bestowed upon a limited number of senior members of the IEEE who have made "outstanding contributions to the electrical and information technologies and sciences for the benefit of humanity and the profession." Olshen, who is chief of the medical center's biostatistics division, was chosen for his contributions to theory and design of decision trees and tree-structured classifiers and codes.

Sylvia Plevritis, PhD, has been promoted to associate professor (research) of radiology as of Jan. 1. Her work involves the development of novel computational and informatics tools, relying on multi-modality, high-throughput data of molecular cancer signatures, in-vivo images and clinical outcomes.

Philip Tsao, MD, has been promoted to associate professor of medicine as of Jan. 1. His research interests include molecular mechanisms of atherosclerosis and vascular remodeling, biomechanical modulation of vascular cell function and the role of diabetes in vascular disease.