Thomas Carli (M.D. 1972, Residency 1973), clinical associate professor of psychiatry, has been named assistant dean for clinical affairs. In his new role, he will focus on medical and disease management programs, the development of integrated services, and new models of care for chronically ill populations. Carli also directs the U-M Depression Center's community and network programs. He is the former director of the managed behavioral health division and current M-CARE medical director for behavioral health. For the past four years, he has also been medical director of the U-M Health System's Medical Management Center and Disease Management Programs. In this capacity, he serves as medical director of health plans with Ford Motor (Partnership Health), General Motors (Activecare), and county Medicaid (Washtenaw Community Health Organization). His research interests include the development of new care management models for people with chronic illnesses.

Valerie Castle, M.D. (Residency 1990), the Ravitz Foundation Professor of Pediatrics, chair of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, and pediatric oncologist, received the 2003 RARE Foundation award for Healthcare Excellence. The RARE Foundation's mission is to recognize achievement and reward excellence by identifying people in the local working community who set exceptional examples for today's youth. Rather than celebrating the famous, the Michigan-based foundation acknowledges the accomplishments of those who serve as local role models and heroes in everyday life. Castle received the award in a ceremony on October 27, 2003, held in Detroit.

David Ginsburg, M.D., the James V. Neel Distinguished Professor in the departments of Internal Medicine and Human Genetics, has been awarded the American Heart Association's Basic Research Prize, one of the association's highest accolades, for his discovery of molecular genetic defects causing major bleeding disorders. The association awards the prize annually to recognize "outstanding contributions to the advancement of cardiovascular science." Ginsburg, who is also a research professor in the U-M Life Sciences Institute, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and co-author of one of the leading textbooks for medical students, was one of two prize winners this year. He was cited for "pivotal discoveries ... that open the way to more effective strategies for prevention and treatment of numerous major inherited bleeding and clotting disorders, including von Willebrand disease."

Carmen R. Green, M.D. (Residency 1992), associate professor of anesthesiology, participated in a first-of-its-kind symposium entitled "Narrative, Pain and Suffering," held at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center located on Lake Como in Bellagio, Italy, in October, 2003. The center is owned by the Rockefeller Foundation and is renowned as a retreat where the likes of Verdi and John F. Kennedy wrote significant works. Green's presentation focused on the role of disparities in pain as they relate to age, race, gender and social stratification, as well as the role narrative medicine might play in helping the physician.

Genevieve Kruger, M.D./ Ph.D. candidate in the Medical Scientist Training Program and the Program in Cellular and Molecular Biology, is one of 17 graduate students from the U.S. and Canada chosen to receive the 2004 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award sponsored by the Basic Sciences Division of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Nominations were solicited internationally; the winners were selected on the basis of the quality, originality and significance of their work. The award, established in 2000, honors the late Harold M. Weintraub, Ph.D., a founding member of Fred Hutchinson's Basic Sciences Division, who died in 1995 from brain cancer at the age of 49. Weintraub was an international leader in the field of molecular biology. Kruger studies neural crest stem cells, primitive cells that generate the peripheral nervous system during early fetal development.

Timothy R.B. Johnson, M.D. (Residency 1979), the Bates Professor of the Diseases of Women and Children, chair of obstetrics and gynecology, professor of women's studies, and research scientist in the Center for Human Growth and Development, has been appointed to the National Institutes of Health's Advisory Committee on Research on Women's Health. His membership on the committee will be effective through January 31, 2007. The committee is responsible for advising the director of the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health on appropriate research activities to be undertaken by the national research institutes with respect to women's health and related issues. Johnson initiated the Women's Health Program at U-M, which has received designation and funding by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a National Center of Excellence in Women's Health.

Ovide F. Pomerleau, Ph.D., professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and director of the Behavioral Medicine Program, was awarded the 2004 Ove Ferno Award for Clinical Research for innovative research on nicotine and tobacco. Given once every three years by the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, the award acknowledges groundbreaking conceptual and scientific contributions to the field of tobacco and nicotine research, and outstanding leadership in nicotine and tobacco research dissemination activities. Pomerleau received the award at the society's annual conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he presented a plenary lecture on his research.

Howard Shevrin, Ph.D., a professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and in the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, was named one of four winners of the Mary S. Sigourney Award for 2003. He received the award on January 23 in New York. The award recognizes outstanding achievements in applied psychoanalysis and research. Given by the Mary S. Sigourney Award Trust, an independent foundation named for a California publisher who sought to reward new activity in psychoanalysis, the award is given to U.S. recipients only once every three years. For more than 40 years, Shevrin has worked at the boundaries between the disciplines of neuroscience and psychoanalysis, looking for evidence that Freudian concepts such as the unconscious and repression could be documented through physical measures of brain activity.

William L. Smith (Ph.D. 1971), the Minor J. Coon Professor of Biological Chemistry and chair of the Department of Biological Chemistry, has received the 2004 Avanti Award in Lipids, sponsored by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, in recognition of his outstanding research contributions. Smith presented a lecture, entitled "Structure, Function and Regulation of Cyclooxygenases," at the society's annual meeting in Boston in June.

Rajiv Tandon, M.D., professor of psychiatry and director, Schizophrenia Division, and Tom Carli (M.D. 1972, Residency 1973), clinical associate professor of psychiatry and assistant dean for clinical affairs, have been appointed by Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm to the Michigan Mental Health Commission. Established as a temporary body appointed by executive order, it is the state's first commission designed to recommend sweeping changes in both the delivery of service and effectiveness of Michigan's mental health network. Members will meet in 2004 to re-evaluate the state's publicly funded mental health system with the ultimate goal of using its recommendations to transform Michigan's mental health system into a national model. The commission is comprised of mental health consumers, advocates, care providers, and representatives from law enforcement, the courts, policymakers and the public.

Peter A. Ward (M.D. 1960, Residency 1963), the Godfrey D. Stobbe Professor of Pathology and chair and professor of pathology, was elected as an inaugural fellow of the Council on Cardiopulmonary, Perioperative and Critical Care, which carries the designation of Fellow of the American Heart Association. Ward has served on numerous national review boards, has been president of the U.S. and Canadian Academy of Pathology, the American Board of Pathology, the American Society for Experimental Pathology, and Universities Associated for Education and Research in Pathology. He also served as interim dean of the U-M Medical School from 1982-85. His research relates to mediators and regulators of the inflammatory response, with particular emphasis on cytokines, complement and protease inhibitors. More than 400 of Ward's papers have appeared in peer-reviewed journals.

Larry Warren, associate vice president of the U-M Health System, has been reappointed for a second term through early 2008. Warren first served as interim director of the U-M Hospitals and Health Centers for nearly two years before being named executive director in 1998. Along with his reappointment for a second five-year term, Warren received a new title, director and chief executive officer of the U-M Hospitals and Health Centers. The reappointment also continues his current title within the health system leadership and his adjunct professorship in the U-M School of Public Health. Warren is credited with leading the hospitals and health centers to excellent financial health, increased clinical activity and high quality of care during a time when many hospitals have struggled due to declines in reimbursement and major increases in costs for technology, pharmaceuticals, regulatory compliance and staff compensation.

Warren also was elected by the Michigan Health and Hospital Association as treasurer of its corporate board through July 2004. Corporate board officers direct the Lansing-based association's statewide representation of Michigan hospitals, health systems and health care providers through education, advocacy and communication.

Gregory T. Wolf (M.D. 1973), chair and professor of otolaryngology - head and neck surgery, received a Presidential Citation from the American Academy of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery in September 2003 at its annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. The citation was awarded to Wolf for his leadership in establishing multi-institutional trials in head and neck oncology that helped redefine organ preservation. Wolf began his service at U-M in 1980, when he was recruited from the National Cancer Institute. He became chair of the Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery in 1993.

Walter Block, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, Dies at 92

Walter D. Block (Ph.D. 1938), associate professor emeritus of biochemistry in the U-M Medical School's Department of Dermatology and professor emeritus of human nutrition in the U-M School of Public Health, died January 5 in Ann Arbor. He was 92.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Block received his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Dayton and his master's and doctoral degrees from U-M. From 1939 to 1944, he served as an instructor in the Department of Biological Chemistry and as a research associate in the Rackham Arthritis Research Unit. He went on to become an assistant professor of biological chemistry in the Department of Dermatology, and in 1967 joined the faculty of the U-M School of Public Health, where he taught until his retirement in 1982. From 1970 to 1976, Block was chair of the Nutritional Science Program in Rackham Graduate School.

Throughout his career, he served as a consultant and advisor to clinical and research laboratories in Michigan and Indiana. During the late 1940s, he was a biochemical consultant for the Viobin Corporation in Springfield, Ohio. His many research interests included protein-calorie malnutrition, the role of standardized exercise on tissue-lipid distribution, triglyceride and carbohydrate metabolism in normal adults and in patients with coronary heart disease, and biochemical studies related to the renowned Tecumseh Community Health Survey. He was the author or co-author of more than 250 scientific publications and several books, including the first textbook on the treatment of arthritis with gold salts and a genetic study on amyloidosis in the Amish population of Bluffton, Indiana.

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