Medical center people

James Fries

Thomas Robinson

Yvonne Maldonado

Marlene Rabinovitch

Daria Mochly-Rosen

Ralph Horwitz

Alan Yeung

James Fries, MD, professor of medicine, has been named the Society for Public Health Education's 2007 honorary fellow—the organization's highest award to a nonmember. Much of his work has been focused on improving the use of quantitative data to resolve central clinical problems of rheumatology. He also founded the Arthritis, Rheumatism and Aging Medical Information System, a national chronic disease data bank system that involves 17 centers in the United States and Canada. Fries will be honored during the society's 58th annual meeting on Nov. 3 in Washington, D.C.

Thomas Robinson, MD, MPH, has been promoted to professor of pediatrics and of medicine, as of Oct. 1. His work focuses on "solution-oriented" research, developing and evaluating effective health promotion and disease prevention interventions for children and adolescents and their families. His research is largely experimental, conducting school-, family- and community-based randomized controlled trials to test the efficacy of theory-driven behavioral, social and environmental interventions. Those interventions include efforts to prevent and treat obesity, improve nutrition, increase physical activity, reduce smoking, reduce aggression and reduce children's television use. His research has also examined causal relationships between hypothesized risk factors and health outcomes. Robinson also serves as director of the Center for Healthy Weight in the Department of Pediatrics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.

Yvonne Maldonado, MD, has been promoted to professor of pediatrics (infectious diseases) and of health research and policy (by courtesy), as of Oct. 1. Much of her research has been focused on epidemiologic aspects of viral vaccine development and prevention of perinatal HIV transmission. A major project has been to identify the molecular epidemiology of factors affecting the immunogenicity, transmission, and neuroreversion of oral polio vaccine among children living in developing areas of the world, where immunogenicity to the oral polio vaccine is poor. Maldonado also works on perinatal HIV infection, including strategies to prevent breastfeeding transmission in developing settings as well as understanding how to maximize prevention strategies among pregnant women in developed countries.

Michaela Liedtke, MD, has been appointed assistant professor of medicine (hematology), as of Sept. 1. Her research interest is focused on the pathogenesis of acute leukemia that is caused by chromosomal translocations involving the Mixed Lineage Leukemia gene. Patients with this gene-related leukemia have a particularly poor prognosis and almost always relapse after their initial therapy. A major focus of Liedtke's research is the development of new therapeutic strategies for the treatment of this gene-leukemia and other types of relapsed or refractory acute leukemia in adults.

The Stanford Cardiovascular Institute has named three associate directors and two new members to the institute. Tom Quertermous, MD, the William G. Irwin Professor in Cardiovascular Medicine, will serve as associate director for adult translational research, and Marlene Rabinovitch, MD, the Dwight and Vera Dunlevie Professor in Pediatric Cardiology, will serve as associate director for pediatric translational research. Daria Mochly-Rosen, PhD, senior associate dean for research in the School of Medicine, and the George D. Smith Professor in Translational Medicine, will serve as associate director for basic research. Ralph Horwitz, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine, and Alan Yeung, MD, the Interventional Professor in the School of Medicine, have been named members at large. The institute's mission is to develop and pioneer integrative strategies to prevent, diagnose, treat and ultimately eliminate cardiovascular diseases.

Mark Nicolls, MD, has been appointed associate professor of medicine (pulmonary and critical care medicine and immunology and rheumatology), as of Oct. 1. His lab focuses primarily on the contribution of the immune response to lung disease, specifically examining the contribution of inflammation to the development of pulmonary hypertension and processes which lead to fibrosis in lung transplantation.

Corinna Darian-Smith, PhD, has been promoted to associate professor of comparative medicine, as of Oct. 1. Her research focuses on two main areas: the structural organization and function of central neural pathways that underlie directed manual behavior, and the capacity of these central neural pathways or circuits to compensate and adapt following localized injury.

Calvin Kuo, MD, PhD, has been promoted to associate professor of medicine (hematology), effective Nov. 1. Much of the work in Kuo's lab is focused on the biologic characterization of novel molecules regulating angiogenesis, and assessment of their use for anti-angiogenic therapy of cancer. A second interest is in the biology of intestinal stem cells.