Inside Stanford Medicine - October 17th, 2011
Three School of Medicine faculty members have been elected to the Institute of Medicine, one of the top professional honors in the fields of health and medicine.
Margaret Fuller, PhD, the Reed-Hodgson Professor in Human Biology, is a professor of developmental biology and of genetics. Her work involves understanding the mechanisms that regulate adult stem cells. Fuller uses the fruit fly male germ line as a model for teasing apart the factors that either hold stem cells in an undifferentiated state or push cells to differentiate into adult fates.
David Relman, MD, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor, is a professor of medicine and of microbiology and immunology. He also serves as chief of infectious diseases at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. He has developed methods that have enabled him to characterize the thousands of species of bacteria that live inside each of us, and is working to understand how and why the composition and function of our microbial communities vary across space and time, and how they contribute to health and disease.
Abraham Verghese, MD, is a professor of medicine and the department’s senior associate chair for the theory and practice of medicine. He is an author whose most recent book is the novel, Cutting for Stone, which has been on the New York Times’ best-seller list for 83 weeks.Verghese’s primary interest is patient-physician relationship and training physicians on the importance of the physical examination of a patient.
The three Stanford faculty are among the 65 members added to the IOM this year. The elections were announced Oct. 17.
Established in 1970 as the health branch of the National Academy of Sciences, IOM is a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on health issues.
