At a ceremony held Monday evening at the Peabody Institute, 11 outstanding individuals with connections to Johns Hopkins University were formally inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. They are among 16 new members elected to the society this year.
The ceremony, hosted by university Provost Sunil Kumar, celebrated former postdoctoral fellows, postdoctoral degree recipients, house staff, and junior or visiting faculty who have gained marked distinction in their respective fields since spending formative years at Johns Hopkins. Nominated by JHU faculty, the inductees were presented with the Society of Scholars medallion and an official certificate of membership.
"The Society of Scholars embodies the excellence that defines the Johns Hopkins University," Kumar said. "By celebrating those who have achieved at the highest level, often across disciplinary boundaries, we celebrate what we hold most dear: a commitment to excellence."
The Society of Scholars was created on the recommendation of former university president Milton S. Eisenhower and approved by the university board of trustees on May 1, 1967. Since its founding, 658 scholars have been elected for membership in the society, including those inducted yesterday.
Image caption: A ceremony held Monday evening at the Peabody Institute honored individuals with connections to Johns Hopkins University who have been inducted into the Society of Scholars.
Image credit: James T. VanRensselaer / Homewood Photography
This year's cohort features scholars from around the world, including Geneva, Switzerland; Casablanca, Morroco; and Cologne, Germany. They are renowned pediatricians, humanitarians, biologists, and engineers. They work on robotics, cardiovascular disorders, communicable diseases, and planetary science.
The new members for 2017 are:
R. Bruce Aylward, MD, MPH
Geneva, Switzerland | Read bio
Bruce Aylward is assistant director-general of the World Health Organization, where he has been a leader in the organization's response to emerging infectious diseases and humanitarian crises. During his 25-year career at WHO, Aylward led the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a partnership that deployed more than 6,000 field personnel to affected regions globally, developed new tools and vaccines, and reduced the number of polio-endemic countries in the world to only two. He served as WHO's assistant director-general for the Polio and Emergencies Cluster and special representative of the director-general for Ebola response, heading the organization's response to the outbreak in West Africa and providing strategic and technical leadership to the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response. As head of the Outbreaks and Health Emergencies Cluster, he led the most substantive reform of WHO's approach to those areas in the organization's history. Aylward received his medical degree from Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. He earned a Master of Public Health in 1991 from what is now the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he also completed a residency in general preventive medicine.
Hynd Bouhia, PhD
Casablanca, Morocco | Read bio
Hynd Bouhia is chairman and CEO of Global Nexus, a private equity fund dedicated to clean energy infrastructure in Morocco, and an associate professor of finance at the International University of Rabat. Previously, she worked as the global head of strategy and development at CDG Development, Morocco's largest public pension fund, where she was responsible for long-term investment in sustainable territorial development. From 2004 to 2008, Bouhia served as economic adviser to then Moroccan Prime Minister Driss Jettou, and from 2006 to 2008, she was director general of the Casablanca Stock Exchange. Prior to that position, she was a senior financial officer in the Capital Markets group at the World Bank, where she worked on raising debt for developing countries and environmental policies in emerging economies. Bouhia was ranked the 29th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes in 2008, and named one of the 100 most powerful Arab women by Business Finance in 2012. She earned a PhD in environmental engineering from Harvard University and subsequently earned an MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
Christopher P. Duggan, MD, MPH
Boston, Massachusetts | Read bio
Christopher Duggan is a renowned physician-scientist in the fields of pediatric nutrition, gastroenterology, and global health. He is a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, a professor in the departments of Nutrition and of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and director of the Center for Nutrition at Boston Children's Hospital. Duggan's early work demonstrated the efficacy of oral rehydration solutions for diarrhea management in the United States. He and colleagues authored the first national treatment guidelines for acute diarrhea published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which were later revised and adopted by the American Academy of Pediatrics for national use. He has evaluated the effect of micronutrient supplementation in infants and mothers born in resource-poor countries, and his research has led to substantial improvements in the care of patients with intestinal failure. Duggan graduated from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1987; he was an intern and resident in the Department of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1987 to 1990 and a postdoctoral fellow and research associate in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health from 1990 to 1991.
Elizabeth C. Engle, MD
Boston, Massachusetts | Read bio
Elizabeth Engle is a professor of neurology and ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and senior associate in neurology, ophthalmology, and medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, where she also holds the Neuro-Ophthalmology Research Chair. Over the past 15 years, she and her research team have made seminal findings in the genetic etiology and mechanism of various forms of congenital strabismus, cranial nerve disorders, and disorders of axon growth and guidance. Since 2008, Engle has been an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is a recipient of the Society for Pediatric Research's prestigious E. Mead Johnson Award for research in pediatrics and the American Academy of Neurology's Sidney Carter Award in Child Neurology. She has served on advisory boards for the March of Dimes, the National Eye Institute, and the Moebius Syndrome Foundation, among other organizations. Engle received her medical degree from Johns Hopkins in 1985 and was an intern and resident in pediatrics from 1985 to 1988. She did a second residency in child neurology and additional postdoctoral training in genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Boston Children's Hospital.
Elliot M. Frohman, MD, PhD
Coppell, Texas | Read bio
Elliot Frohman is a professor of neurology and neurotherapeutics and ophthalmology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He holds the Kenney Marie Dixon-Pickens Distinguished Professorship in Multiple Sclerosis Research and the Irene Wadel and Robert Atha Distinguished Chair in Neurology, and he is the founding director of the Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology Program and the Clinical Center for Multiple Sclerosis. Since their arrival at UT Southwestern from Johns Hopkins in 1995, Frohman and his wife and closest collaborator, Teresa, have built one of the world's largest and most significant multiple sclerosis centers for clinical care and research. In May 2017, the Frohmans will become the inaugural director and managing director of the Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology Center at the new Susan and Michael Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2000, in collaboration with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, they authored a congressional bill that established the first comprehensive MS treatment training program. More than 1,200 neurologists, neurology resident trainees, nurses, and physician extenders from all 50 states have completed the program, which remains the only one of its kind. In 2015, Frohman, along with long-standing collaborators Peter Calabresi at Johns Hopkins and Laura Balcer at New York University, was awarded the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's prestigious Barancik Prize for Innovation in Multiple Sclerosis Research. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and monographs and received more than 16 national and international outstanding teaching awards. Frohman received his MD and PhD degrees from UC Irvine and completed his residency and fellowship training in neurology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was chief resident from 1993 to 1994.
Susan L. Furth, MD, PhD
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | Read bio
Susan Furth is chief of the Division of Nephrology at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where she is the Laffey-Connolly Professor of Pediatric Nephrology and associate chair for academic affairs. She also holds appointments as a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Furth leads the CKiD cohort study, the largest multicenter prospective cohort study of children with chronic kidney disease ever conducted in North America. She is also one of the principal investigators of the BioCon consortium, which seeks to identify novel biomarkers for risk of chronic kidney disease progression, and is a co-investigator on two studies involving eight pediatric centers working together to initiate clinical trials in childhood kidney disease in clinical care settings. After receiving her MD from the University of Pennsylvania, she completed an internship and residency in pediatrics and a clinical and research fellowship in pediatric nephrology at Johns Hopkins, as well as a PhD in clinical investigation from the university's Bloomberg School of Public Health. From 1996 to 2010, she served on the Johns Hopkins faculty as an associate professor of epidemiology in Public Health and a professor of pediatrics in Medicine.
Helene Gayle, MD, MPH
Washington, D.C. | Read bio
An expert on health, global development, and humanitarian issues, Helene Gayle is the inaugural CEO of McKinsey Social Initiative, a nonprofit organization that unites stakeholders to work toward global social change. She is the former CEO and president of CARE USA, an international humanitarian organization dedicated to combating global poverty. Before joining CARE, she served 20 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she focused on fighting HIV/AIDS and was appointed the first director of the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention. She also directed the HIV, TB, and Reproductive Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and chaired President Obama's advisory council on HIV/AIDS. Gayle attained the rank of rear admiral and assistant surgeon general in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. She was named one of Newsweek's top 10 women in leadership in 2008, one of Foreign Policy's top 100 global thinkers in 2010, and one of Forbes' 100 most powerful women in the world in 2014. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, she has received numerous honors, including the 2012 Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award. After receiving her MD from the University of Pennsylvania, she received a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health before completing residency training in pediatric medicine at Children's National Medical Center.
Patricia D. Hurn, PhD, RN
Ann Arbor, Michigan | Read bio
Patricia Hurn is dean of the School of Nursing and professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the University of Michigan. She is internationally recognized for her work in understanding the cellular and molecular basis of gender differences in response to experimental brain injury and for her research on stroke and other neurological conditions. Her recent research has focused on estrogen as an immunoprotectant in cerebral blood restrictions. She directs an interdisciplinary biomedical research laboratory that translates findings to point-of-care patient applications. Hurn has been the principal investigator on more than $20 million in grant-supported research, as well as the co-investigator or collaborator on numerous other research projects. In addition, she has provided leadership on critical issues such as collaborative bio-health research models, science education innovation, and research technologies. After completing her nursing training at the University of Florida and University of Washington, she received a PhD in physiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 1990, followed by postdoctoral training in anesthesiology and biomedical engineering. She served on the Johns Hopkins faculty from 1993 to 2003, including appointments as professor in the School of Medicine and associate professor in the School of Nursing.
Eduardo Marbán, MD, PhD
Los Angeles, California | Read bio
Eduardo Marbán is director of the Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and professor in residence of medicine and physiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is an internationally recognized expert in cardiac excitation-contraction coupling, stem cell biology, and basic and translational aspects of regenerative medicine in the cardiovascular system. He is the principal investigator of four NIH-sponsored clinical trials of progenitor or progenitor cell products in structural heart disease, and he has founded two companies that have made important contributions in the clinical deployment of regenerative medicine strategies in cardiovascular medicine. Among Marbán's many honors and awards are the American Heart Association's Basic Research Prize, the Research Achievement Award of the International Society for Heart Research, the Gill Heart Institute Award, and the Distinguished Scientist Awards of the AHA and the American College of Cardiology. After earning his MD and PhD from Yale University, he joined the Osler Medical Service at Johns Hopkins in 1981 for his internship and residency, followed by a fellowship in cardiology. In 1985, he joined the faculty at the School of Medicine, where his 22-year tenure included serving as chief of Cardiology from 2003 to 2007.
Mani Menon, MD
Detroit, Michigan | Read bio
Mani Menon is a pioneer in robotic surgery and one of the foremost urologists in the United States. He is the Rajendra and Padma Vattikuti Distinguished Professor of Oncology and founding director of the Vattikuti Urology Institute at the Henry Ford Health System, where he established the first cancer-oriented robotics program in the world. After receiving his medical degree from the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) in India, he completed his residency in urology at the Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins in 1980. As a resident, he developed a technique that allowed measurement of androgen receptors in the human prostate for the first time. Menon has subsequently pioneered robotic surgery techniques—including the first radical prostatectomy using the da Vinci robot—that have revolutionized the field of urological oncology and laid the framework for extending robotics to other surgical disciplines, influencing the surgical care of millions of patients worldwide. His numerous honors include the 2008 Dr. B.C. Roy Award, the highest honor awarded by the Government of India for achievements in medical science; the American Urological Association's 2011 Hugh Hampton Young Award, named after the founding chair of urology at Johns Hopkins; and the 2016 Keyes Medal of the American Association of Genitourinary Surgeons, recognized as the greatest individual citation in urology.
Allison M. Okamura, PhD
Stanford, California | Read bio
A professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University, Allison Okamura is one of the most highly cited haptics researchers in the world. Her work focuses on developing the principles and tools needed to realize robotic and human-machine systems capable of haptic interaction, particularly for biomedical applications. After earning her PhD from Stanford in 2000, she joined the Johns Hopkins faculty as an assistant professor in the Whiting School of Engineering. Over the next 11 years, she would go on to become a professor in and vice chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, helping to establish Johns Hopkins as one of the top 10 universities for robotics in the United States, according to Business Insider in 2014. She played a leadership role in the Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology Engineering Research Center, and was co-founder and deputy director of the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics. An elected fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Okamura has been recognized by numerous awards for both her research and her excellence in teaching and mentorship. She has been a role model and champion for improving the diversity of students, faculty, and the professional practice of engineering.
Steven Piantadosi, MD, PhD
Los Angeles, California | Read bio
Steven Piantadosi is the Phase One Foundation Distinguished Chair and director of the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Since 2007, he has increased tenfold the center's peer-reviewed research funding while maintaining a portfolio of more than 100 active therapeutic clinical trials. A fellow of the Society for Clinical Trials, he is a leading expert in the design and analysis of clinical trials for cancer research and advises numerous academic programs and collaborations nationally on clinical trial design and conduct in areas beyond cancer, such as lung disease and degenerative neurological disease. He is a co-investigator on a National Cancer Institute R01 grant addressing novel dose-finding designs with multiple agents, teaches clinical trials at UCLA, and is author of a definitive textbook on clinical trials that will soon be published in its third edition. Piantadosi received his MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 1987, he became an assistant professor in the schools of Medicine and Public Health at Johns Hopkins, and he remained on the faculty until 2007, holding appointments as professor of oncology, biostatistics, and epidemiology.
Neil R. Powe, MD, MPH, MBA
San Francisco, California | Read bio
Neil Powe is the chief of medicine at the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and the Constance B. Wofsy Distinguished Professor of Medicine and vice chair of medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine. His work as an international leader in epidemiology and outcomes research has united medicine and public health. In 1986, after receiving an MD and MPH from Harvard University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he became an instructor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Over the course of his 23-year career at Johns Hopkins, he was a University Distinguished Service Professor in the School of Medicine and the inaugural James F. Fries Professor of Medicine, as well as a professor in the School of Public Health. As director of the Johns Hopkins Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research, he catalyzed its growth into a vibrant and multidisciplinary clinical research and training center of excellence as well as an incubator for future leaders. He was the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Evidence-Based Practice Center and created numerous platforms to cultivate young clinical scientists and educators to address major problems in health and health care delivery, including the Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Scholars Program and a pre-doctoral research training program for physician and nurse trainees. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, Powe is the recipient of numerous honors and awards.
Joachim Saur, PhD
Cologne, Germany | Read bio
Joachim Saur, a renowned researcher in planetary and space science, is a professor of geophysics at the University of Cologne in Germany, where he received his PhD in 2000. One of his primary research interests is the search for liquid water and thus the possibility of habitable worlds beyond Earth. He conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences before serving as a senior research scientist at the university's Applied Physics Laboratory. During this time, he also became an observer using the Hubble Space Telescope operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute and was the principal investigator of the program that discovered water vapor plumes on Jupiter's moon Europa. He returned to the University of Cologne as a full professor of geophysics in 2005 and has served twice as chair of the Department of Geosciences. Saur developed a novel technique to probe the interior of planetary bodies with a telescope, which he used in 2015 to demonstrate that Jupiter's moon Ganymede possesses a subsurface water ocean. He has served extensively in Europe and the United States on advisory panels and telescope allocation committees, and he is involved in multiple NASA and ESA space missions to other planets and moons.
Julia A. Schillinger, MD, MSc
New York, New York | Read bio
Julia Schillinger, an expert on sexually transmitted disease control and neonatal herpes, is a medical epidemiologist with the Division of STD Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since 2002, she has been assigned to the Bureau of STD Control in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where she serves as director of surveillance, epidemiology, and special projects. She has made several significant and lasting contributions to her field, most notably in expedited partner therapy (EPT) and neonatal herpes infection. EPT, in which a provider gives a patient medication to deliver to sex partners, enables treatment of partners who would not seek care, thereby interrupting the cycle of repeat infection. Schillinger led the first randomized controlled trial of EPT for Chlamydia trachomatis infection, demonstrating that EPT reduced rates of repeated infection. In New York, she spearheaded a successful effort to pass state legislation permitting EPT for chlamydia. She also implemented a neonatal herpes surveillance system that established several key facts about the causal agent and increasing number of deaths. Schillinger is a captain in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. She received her MD from Yale University in 1990 and completed a residency in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins before joining the CDC in 1993. In 1997, she received a Master of Science in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Steven Zelditch, PhD
Evanston, Illinois | Read bio
Steven Zelditch is the Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Mathematics at Northwestern University. He is one of the leading researchers in the mathematical theory of quantum chaos. He made the first major breakthrough in this subject in his 1987 paper concerning ergodic systems on curved surfaces. He has made several other seminal contributions to the theory of eigenfunctions. In addition, he developed an entirely new method in the theory of Bergman kernels on complex manifolds, and his results have been widely used in research on generalized complex polynomials in multidimensional settings. Zelditch is the recipient of the 2013 Stefan Bergman Prize of the American Mathematical Society and is a fellow of the society. He has delivered several invited talks and is on the editorial boards of Communications in Mathematical Physics, Analysis & PDE, and Journal of Geometric Analysis. Zelditch received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and was on the faculty at Columbia University before being appointed an assistant professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins in 1985. He served on the faculty until 2010, most recently as professor of mathematics.
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