On Tuesday, Nov. 1, the Johns Hopkins School of
Medicine will celebrate the milestone of having promoted
more than 100 women to full professorships. The
celebration, scheduled to begin at 7:45 a.m. in Turner
Auditorium, East Baltimore campus, will include a symposium
featuring 2004 Nobel laureate Linda Buck, a Howard Hughes
Medical Institute investigator at the University of
Washington, Seattle, as keynote speaker. Also featured are
faculty member Catherine DeAngelis, editor in chief of the
Journal of the American Medical Association, Cokie Roberts
of ABC News and more than a dozen of Johns Hopkins' leading
women physicians and scientists.
The School of Medicine, which opened in 1893, leads
the country as the institution with the largest percentage
of female medical faculty who have been promoted to full
professor. "We have come a long way, and there are more to
come," said Janice Clements, vice dean for faculty and
director of the Department of Comparative Medicine at
Hopkins.
The symposium honors the legacy of Mary Elizabeth
Garrett, the Baltimore philanthropist who raised the funds
to open the medical school and who insisted from the
beginning that the school admit women on equal terms as
men.
"We have reached the 100-plus mark largely because of
Miss Garrett's insistence that women be admitted to the
medical school," Clements said.
The event's speakers will discuss the advancement of
women and review Johns Hopkins' record, thanks to a recent
report from the Committee on Faculty Development and
Gender.
Additional speakers include Julia Haller, Department
of Ophthalmology, vitreo-retinal surgical services; Barbara
Migeon, Institute of Genetic Medicine, pediatrics; Diane
Becker, Department of Medicine, general internal medicine;
Nancy Davidson, Department of Oncology, breast; Susan
Michaelis, Department of Cell Biology; Jennifer
Haythornthwaite, Department of Psychiatry, medical
psychology; Geraldine Seydoux, Department of Molecular
Biology and Genetics; Nancy Craig, Department of Molecular
Biology and Genetics; Ethylin Jabs, Institute of Genetic
Medicine, pediatrics; Cynthia Rand, Department of Medicine,
pulmonary; Cynthia Sears, Department of Medicine,
infectious disease; and Pamela L. Zeitlin, Department of
Pediatrics, pulmonary.
Among the Johns Hopkins full professors being honored
at the celebration are:
Janice Clements, a
professor since 1990 whose research expertise is in
molecular virology and the pathogenesis of HIV in animal
models. Since 1993, Clements has been the director of the
Retrovirus Laboratory, an interdisciplinary group of 30
faculty, fellows and students who study in vitro and in
vivo molecular virology, pathology, immunology and cellular
signal transduction pathways related to HIV and AIDS.
Clements is interested in the molecular mechanism that
HIV uses to enter the brain and establish infection and
latency. Her group has been successful in understanding the
events that occur which establish virus infection in
macrophages and microglia in the brain and has recently
demonstrated that a unique mechanism is responsible for
establishing viral latency in these cells. The scientists
have also recently demonstrated that the antibiotic
minocycline has both antiviral and anti-inflammatory action
in the infected brain and substantially reduces the central
nervous system disease.
Carol Greider, director of
the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, who
joined Hopkins as an associate professor in July 1997. Her
work is based on her discovery and study of the enzyme
telomerase. Until her discovery, the existence of
telomerase had been only speculative, but now scientists
know the enzyme is found in all organisms with "linear"
chromosomes, including humans. Thanks to her achievements,
it is now known that normal cells stop dividing when the
ends of their chromosomes--telomeres--get too short. Cancer
cells can divide indefinitely in part because they turn on
telomerase to keep the ends intact.
Greider's lab is divided between those working on the
biochemistry of telomerase to identify and characterize
telomerase components and those working on the consequences
of telomere dysfunction, including the role of telomeres in
tumor growth.
Barbara Fivush, chief of
pediatric nephrology and a professor of pediatrics, who has
been a long-standing advocate for the pediatric end-stage
renal disease community in Maryland. In 1984, she
petitioned the state to allow the creation of a dialysis
facility solely for children and worked to improve
pediatric renal transplantation outcomes in Maryland.
Fivush has supported legislation that benefits
pediatric patients with ESRD and has worked closely with
the National Kidney Foundation of Maryland, the Johns
Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center and the Transplant
Resource Center of Maryland. Her research interests have
been dominated by pediatric ESRD, and in particular she has
been instrumental in setting the standard for immunizing
pediatric patients maintained on dialysis. More recently
she has become involved in pediatric ESRD on a national
level.
Linda P. Fried, a professor
of medicine, epidemiology, health policy and nursing, who
heads the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health and the
Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology. Her work
focuses on promoting the health of our aging society by
determining the causes of frailty and disability in older
adults, and opportunities for prevention and treatment of
these major adverse health outcomes.
Fried is internationally recognized as the developer
of the leading phenotype of frailty in older adults and for
directing research to discover its causes. She is the
co-designer of the Experience Corps, a program to promote
the health of older adults by enlisting men and women, 60
and older, to serve in public elementary schools.
Gabrielle V. Ronnett, a
professor of neurology, with long-standing interests in two
principal areas: the use of the olfactory system as a model
of neuronal development and of developmental diseases, and
the role of brain signaling pathways in regulating energy
balance and food intake. Her contributions in the field of
neurology include understanding the molecular basis of Rett
syndrome, a form of autism, and using the olfactory system
as a developmental model to understand the factors involved
in maintaining health of nerve cells. Her contribution in
the field of feeding is the discovery of novel brain
pathways that may control food intake and the development
of compounds that may eventually be used to control
appetite and weight gain.
Cynthia Wolberger, a
professor of biophysics and biophysical chemistry, who is
investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying gene
regulation in eukaryotic cells. She uses X-ray
crystallography and other biophysical approaches to study
the structure and behavior of protein complexes that
control the packaging of chromosomes and regulate the
synthesis of messenger RNA. Her recent work focuses on the
Sir2 family of proteins and the mechanism by which they
bring about transcriptional silencing. She also studies the
mechanism of polyubiquitin chain assembly.
Additional information about the 100 Women at Hopkins
gala is available online at
100womengala.onc.jhmi.edu/index.cfm.