News Release

Brody, 52, a physician and electrical engineer, will take office no later than Sept. 1.

"Johns Hopkins is, obviously, an extraordinary university with an extraordinary past," Brody said. "The opportunity to lead it into the 21st century is an exciting one indeed."

Brody called Hopkins "well-positioned" to address what he said is the critical issue facing all American research universities: "How to provide a high-quality education, with a strong research component, in an era of increasing competition for resources."

"Hopkins has got to face that issue squarely," he said.

The lessons learned in recent years by academic medical centers like those at Hopkins and Minnesota are important for their parent universities and all of higher education, Brody said.

"The issues of cost, quality and access -- which is what health care reform is supposedly all about -- are going to hit higher education," he said.

Morris W. Offit, chairman of the university's board of trustees and of the search committee that recommended Brody to the board, said he was influenced by Brody's commitment to addressing these concerns.

"Cost of delivery is critical for education, just as cost of delivery has made managed care critical for health care," Offit said. "With new technology, how are you going to educate more effectively and efficiently in the future? What is a classroom going to be? What is a campus?

"Bill Brody really understands these issues. He understands delivery systems and the application of technology."

Brody's election today by the trustees ends a search that began in December 1994, when President William C. Richardson announced he would leave Hopkins to become president of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Daniel Nathans, who has been interim president since June, will return to the School of Medicine, where he has been a member of the faculty for more than 30 years.

Brody has been at the University of Minnesota since 1994, responsible for 5,000 students and 14,600 faculty and staff in two medical schools, five other health professions schools and a hospital and health system. He oversees a combined budget of $750 million.

He has been a vocal and active advocate for the "radical change" necessary to resolve the serious financial problems of an academic medical center, highly dependent on patient revenue, in a market more heavily penetrated by managed care than any other in the country.

Brody was Martin Donner Professor and director of the Department of Radiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine from 1987 to 1994, and also held a faculty appointment in the Whiting School of Engineering. He chaired the Committee for the 21st Century, a university-wide faculty strategic planning group.

Before coming to Hopkins, Brody was professor of radiology and electrical engineering at Stanford University and founder of Resonex Inc., a medical imaging company.

Brody graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965 and earned a master's degree in electrical engineering at MIT a year later. He received his medical degree from Stanford in 1970 and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the same university in 1972. He trained in cardiovascular surgery at Stanford and in radiology at the University of California at San Francisco.

His research focus has been on cardiovascular imaging and minimally invasive therapy and on non-invasive imaging methods such as computerized imaging and MRI. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a founding fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. He also is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American College of Radiology, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He served from 1991 until this year on the MIT Corporation, the institute's board of trustees.

He and his wife, Wendy, have two children, a daughter, 21, and a son, 15.

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