The Society of Scholars was created on the recommendation of then university President Milton S. Eisenhower and approved by the board of trustees on May 1, 1967. The society — the first of its kind in the nation — inducts former postdoctoral fellows and junior or visiting faculty at Johns Hopkins who have gained marked distinction in their fields of physical, biological, medical, social or engineering sciences or in the humanities and for whom at least five years have elapsed since their last Johns Hopkins affiliation. The Committee of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars, whose members are equally distributed among the academic divisions, elects the scholars from the candidates nominated by the academic divisions that have programs for postdoctoral fellows.

The scholars elected in 2007 will be invested at a ceremony hosted by Provost Steven Knapp at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 16, at Evergreen House. At that time, the new members will be presented with a certificate and a medallion on a black and gold ribbon to be worn with academic regalia. The induction — which brings to 506 the total number of members in the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars — will be followed by a dinner hosted by President William R. Brody. The new members will be recognized at Commencement on May 17.

The following listing of the Society of Scholars members elected in 2007 is accompanied by a short description of their accomplishments at the time of their election to the society.

 

Kenneth H. Brown, Davis, Calif.

Kenneth Brown

Kenneth Brown has spent his career investigating the causes, treatment, prevention and complications of childhood malnutrition in low-income countries, with particular emphasis on the appropriate feeding of infants and young children. Now director of the Program in International and Community Nutrition at the University of California, Davis, Brown is considered an international expert in the dietary management of diarrheal diseases and the role of zinc and other micronutrients in the prevention and treatment of infection. He came to Johns Hopkins — and what is now the Bloomberg School of Public Health — in 1975 and spent three years as a research associate and clinical fellow in Bangladesh, where his lifelong interest in childhood nutrition was born. He continued his work as a faculty member in the Division of Human Nutrition at Johns Hopkins. Brown is the recipient of the International Award for Modern Nutrition, the Kellogg International Nutrition Research Prize and the E.V. McCollum Award of the American Society of Clinical Nutrition.

Nominator: R. Bradley Sack, professor, Department of International Health, Bloomberg School of Public Health.

 

Ralph Anthony DeFronzo, San Antonio

Ralph Anthony DeFronzo

During his endocrinology fellowship in the Department of Medicine from 1971 to 1973 under Reubin Andres, Ralph DeFronzo published with Andres what turned out to be the classic paper describing the glucose clamp, a technique that remains the gold standard for measuring insulin sensitivity. Building on this early work, DeFronzo has become without question one of the most prolific and influential diabetes clinical researchers of his generation. He is currently professor of medicine and chief of the Diabetes Division at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and deputy director of the Texas Diabetes Institute.

Nominator: Christopher D. Saudek, Hugh P. McCormick Family Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine.

 

Raymond Nelson DuBois Jr., Nashville, Tenn.

Raymond Nelson DuBois Jr.

Raymond DuBois is a major contributor to our knowledge of the genetic and molecular factors leading to colon cancer, including our understanding of how nonsteroid anti-inflammatory drugs offer us protection from developing the disease. He became interested in this issue during his 1985 fellowship in gastroenterology in the Department of Medicine under Thomas R. Hendrix and in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetic Medicine under Daniel Nathans. DuBois' research has been applied to the study of other malignancies involving the esophagus, intestine, uterus, ovary and prostate. Currently the B.F. Byrd Jr. Professor of Molecular Oncology and director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, he will start a new role in September as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. DuBois is also president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Nominator: Thomas R. Hendrix, professor emeritus of gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine.

 

Eric R. Fearon, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Eric R. Fearon

Eric Fearon is widely known for his work in human cancer genetics, particularly investigations of gene defects that underlie the development and progression of colon tumors. Currently, he is the Emanuel N. Maisel Professor of Oncology and professor of internal medicine, human genetics and pathology at the University of Michigan School of Medicine; and associate director of basic research at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. After receiving his medical and doctoral degrees from Johns Hopkins under the tutelage of Bert Vogelstein, he conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Chi Van Dang, where he developed a system that is now widely used for the study of protein-protein interactions in living mammalian cells. Fearon served as president of the American Society of Clinical Investigation from 2005 to 2006 and sits on numerous medical journal editorial boards.

Nominator: Chi Van Dang, Johns Hopkins Family Professor for Oncology Research and vice dean for research, School of Medicine.

 

Bates Gill, Washington, D.C.

Bates Gill

Bates Gill is one of the top-three young scholars of contemporary Chinese politics and foreign policy in the Western world. He holds one of the most prestigious endowed chairs in his field, the Freeman Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. After a year as the Fei Yiming Professor of Comparative Politics at the SAIS Nanjing Center, he went on to become a prolific scholar of contemporary China, focusing on its arms control and security concerns, its HIV/AIDS policy and its relations with the United States. His just-released book, Rising Star, promises to be a major contribution to our understanding of China's security behavior.

Nominator: David M. Lampton, George and Sadie Hyman Chair in Chinese Studies and director of the China Studies program, SAIS.

 

James P. Gills, Tarpon Springs, Fla.

James P. Gills

A prominent figure in American ophthalmology, James Gills is recognized as one of the nation's most prolific and innovative anterior segment surgeons. His contributions include refining local anesthesia techniques for cataract surgery; refining and advancing small-incision cataract surgery, which is now the standard of care in the United States; and studying novel approaches for the delivery of adjunctive medical therapy in anterior segment surgery. Gills has been a prolific writer, both in peer-reviewed ophthalmic literature and on the intersection of spirituality and medicine. A Johns Hopkins ophthalmology resident of the Wilmer Institute from 1962 to 1965, he is currently the founding director of the St. Luke's Cataract and Laser Institute in Tarpon Springs, Fla. He also has distinguished himself as a medical philanthropist and has established a professorship at Johns Hopkins in the name of Frank Walsh, one of his former professors, and another in his own name.

Nominator: Peter J. McDonnell, William Holland Wilmer Professor of Ophthalmology and director of the Wilmer Eye Institute, School of Medicine.

 

Yoshi Ichikawa, San Diego

Yoshi Ichikawa

Yoshi Ichikawa is senior director of the Chemistry at Optimer Pharmaceuticals, where he oversees the application of innovative sugar-based medicinal chemistry to improve the properties of drugs. He took on that role after two stints at Johns Hopkins, in 1987 as a postdoctoral fellow under Yuan C. Lee in the Krieger School's Department of Biology and later as an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at the School of Medicine. There he created new and extremely powerful inhibitors of glycohydrases, including those required for sugar metabolism and DNA repair and synthesis. The practical application of this discovery can be found in effective therapeutics for bacterial and parasite infections.

Nominator: Yuan C. Lee, professor, Biology Department, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

 

Malcolm Knight, Basel, Switzerland

Malcolm Knight

Malcolm Knight has the distinction, perhaps uniquely, of having served as a top administrative officer in three very different types of financial organizations: a deputy director of the International Monetary Fund, the second-ranking officer of the Bank of Canada, and chief executive officer and general manager of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. Simultaneously, Knight has been a scholar who has applied economic theory to a lifetime in public service. He has served as an assistant research director for the International Monetary Fund's economic development division and was a member of the editorial board of IMF Papers for 11 years. During that time, he published a number of important articles in leading economic journals, including Econometrica. From 1980 to 1996, he was a teacher and lecturer at the Center for Canadian Studies at SAIS, where he embodied the idea of "theory applied to policy." On two separate occasions, his papers on macroeconomics and exchange rate policy have received major reviews in The Economist, confirming their significance for global economic policy.

Nominator: Charles F. Doran, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of International Studies, SAIS.

 

Jack Levin, San Francisco

Jack Levin

Jack Levin, now a hematologist at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco and professor of laboratory medicine and of medicine at the University of California School of Medicine, joined Johns Hopkins in 1962 as a fellow and spent 17 years on the faculty. He has made many contributions to the field, including demonstrating the association between thrombocytosis and cancer. His most important medical discovery affects everyone who prescribes and receives vaccines and injected fluids: He and his Johns Hopkins colleague Frederick B. Bang discovered that a horseshoe crab blood product, limulus amebocyte lysate, can detect minute amounts of endotoxin. This is now the standard test used to ensure that pharmaceuticals and medical devices are free of bacterial contamination. The work represented an early success in the use of marine biology research to improve human health care.

Nominator: Myron L. Weisfeldt, William Osler Professor of Medicine and director of the Department of Medicine, School of Medicine.

 

Robert M. Naclerio, Chicago

Robert M. Naclerio

Robert Naclerio is an internationally respected clinician and scientist in the fields of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery and clinical asthma and immunology. His work has contributed greatly to our understanding of inflammatory diseases of the nose and paranasal sinuses, common disorders that cause substantial discomfort for patients. His thoughtful approach has brought clarity to a confusing array of inflammatory mediators and processes, and his meticulous clinical trials have helped identify the best treatments. Naclerio trained at Johns Hopkins as a surgical resident from 1976 to 1978 and as a fellow in the Clinical Immunology Division from 1980 to 1982. Today, he is chief of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Pritzker School of Medicine of the University of Chicago.

Nominator: Lloyd B. Minor, Andelot Professor of Laryngology and Otology and director of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, School of Medicine.

 

Peter Schlegel, New York

Peter Schlegel

Peter Schlegel has made numerous contributions to the field of urology since leaving Johns Hopkins in 1989, having completed his residency in general surgery and urology. He is a member of all major urologic societies in North America, and in 2005 he received membership in the prestigious Clinical Society of Genitourinary Surgeons. He serves on the examination committee of the American Board of Urology, is co-editor of Journal of Andrology and section editor of British Journal of Urology, and is a reviewer for all major urologic journals in North America and Europe. Currently, he is senior scientist at the Population Council in New York and chairman of the Department of Urology at the New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

Nominator: John P. Gearhart, professor, Department of Urology, School of Medicine.

 

Sangram Sisodia, Chicago

Sangram Sisodia

The Thomas Reynolds Sr. Family Professor of Neurosciences and director of the Center for Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Chicago, Sangram Sisodia has spent much of his career trying to untangle the knotty biology of familial Alzheimer's disease. A molecular biologist by training, Sisodia, with his team, has used a combination of genetic, molecular, cellular and neurobiological approaches to clarify the biology of proteins critically implicated in this devastating disease that affects 7 percent of people over the age of 65 and 40 percent of those ages 80 and older. In addition, he has contributed significantly to the development of transgenic mice that exhibit features of the human disease and has trained a new cohort of outstanding young scientists who are active in this field. Before joining the University of Chicago, Sisodia was a professor of pathology and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Nominator: Donald L. Price, professor, Department of Pathology, School of Medicine.

 

George Arthur Spirou, Morgantown, W. Va.

George Arthur Spirou

George Spirou is a leader in the field of auditory neuroscience. His postdoctoral fellowship in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins in 1990 under Eric D. Young coincided with the formation of the university's Center for Hearing and Balance, a cross-disciplinary effort encouraging collaborations in biomedical engineering and otolaryngology-head and neck surgery. He went on to re-create that model at West Virginia University, where he has led a 15-year expansion of its programs, achieving national prominence in audition, vision and neuroimaging. Today, Spirou is the director of research in otolaryngology, director of the Sensory Neuroscience Research Center and director of the Center for Neuroscience at West Virginia University.

Nominators: Murray B. Sachs, Bessie Darling Massey Professor and chair of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine; and Lloyd B. Minor, Andelot Professor of Laryngology and Otology and chair of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, School of Medicine.

 

Daniel Sulmasy, New York

Daniel Sulmasy

A Franciscan friar as well as a practicing internist, Daniel Sulmasy is a nationally recognized authority on medical ethics, with a special interest in end-of-life issues, ethics education and spirituality in medicine. He holds the Sisters of Charity Chair in Ethics and is the chairman of the John J. Conley Department of Ethics at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, where he also is an attending physician. He serves as professor of medicine and is director of the Bioethics Institute of New York Medical College. In 2005, Sulmasy was appointed to the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law. He is editor in chief of the journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. The author of four books, he served as an intern and resident in, and assistant chief of, the Osler Medical Service of the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins under the tutelage of both Victor McKusick and John Stobo.

Nominator: Eric B. Bass, professor, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine.

 

Robert Ingersoll White Jr., New Haven, Conn.

Robert Ingersoll White Jr.

Robert White is an innovator, scholar, teacher and visionary in the fields of radiology and cardiology. He spent his early medical career at Johns Hopkins and is now professor of diagnostic radiology and director of the Vascular Malformation Center at Yale University School of Medicine. White is credited with developing four new techniques in interventional radiology and was part of the team of Johns Hopkins physicians who performed the first pulmonary valvuloplasty, a procedure to widen a stiff or narrowed heart valve. His pioneering work in using various interventional techniques to treat malformations of the pulmonary artery, as well as a rare genetic disorder of the blood vessels, has led to the development of 20 centers all over the world dedicated to helping patients manage the devastating disease. White also is credited with transforming the subspecialty of interventional radiology through pioneering the introduction of direct patient admissions, the use of midlevel practitioners and taking responsibility for a more complete spectrum of patient care. In addition, White lectures nationally and internationally, and has helped to train more than 160 fellows in interventional radiology.

Nominator: Jonathan S. Lewin, Martin Donner Professor of Radiology and chair of the Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, School of Medicine.

 

Huntington Faxon Willard, Durham, N.C.

Huntington Faxon Willard

Huntington Willard has spent his career delving into the genetic secrets of human health and disease using new genetic and genomic techniques and human molecular genetics. He began his landmark studies at Johns Hopkins, where he was a postdoctoral fellow under the aegis of Kirby Smith. Currently at Duke University, Willard is the Nanaline H. Duke Professor of Genome Sciences, vice chancellor of Genome Sciences and director of the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. His research team has delved deeply into the mechanisms that cells use to switch off various genes on the X chromosome, a process necessary for normal development and whose malfunction results in a host of genetic disorders. His research has altered our view of how chromosomal function is coded and how this knowledge can be used both to understand cancer and to provide the next generation of gene delivery using artificial chromosomes.

Nominator: Aravinda Chakravarti, Henry J. Knott Professor and former director of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, School of Medicine.

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