Chairman’s Blog
October 2009
Untouchables and Pathology and Healthcare Reform
Thomas Friedman is a columnist for the New York Times and also authored the books The World is Flat, and Hot, Flat, and Crowded. He recently wrote a column about a group he called The New Untouchables. These are people who make significant advances for an organization, improving the work climate and pushing things forward. They are constantly looking for new challenges rather than waiting for the next assignment. Because they are so proactive, they are considered untouchable when time comes to downsize. This is an interesting concept, that an individual’s pattern of reaching out to find new opportunities makes them valuable to the organization. This requires stretching beyond your individual comfort bounds in order to achieve this growth. A recent presentation by Beverly Brown, Ph.D. on faculty development highlighted this issue. Dr. Brown described her own career where she would develop expertise, become accomplished in a position and then take on a new challenge. While this resulted in a decline in her level of expertise in the new challenge, her overall growth continues. As health care reform comes about, the new untouchables in Pathology will be those who expand their horizons, actively seek new challenges and continue professional growth.
February 2009
BU Pathology in the TOP TEN
I am extraordinarily proud to report that our Department is among the top ten academic institutions for the number of accepted first author abstracts at the 2009 United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology annual meeting. At this year’s meeting over 430 academic institutions, including 230 from the United States, submitted nearly 2800 abstracts to this year’s meeting making our accomplishment all the more noteworthy. We are not just in the top 10%, we are among the top ten institutions. The Department is pleased to have 3 oral presentations, an invited lecture and multiple accepted posters at this year’s meeting. To see the list of accepted abstracts see the December Newsletter. Given the number of accepted abstracts, this accomplishment is clearly a team effort. Acceptance of multiple abstracts demonstrates international recognition of the quality of the investigative work done in our Department.
January 2009
Challenges in difficult economic times
During these difficult economic times our Department, Medical School, Hospital and University face challenges that will test our abilities. Our response will define who we will become. The future will be brighter and the investor Warren Buffet wrote that he is personally investing in American companies. Paul Krugman, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize for economics, believes that now is the time to invest in American infrastructure. How will pathology respond to this current funding dilemma? One option is to become cautious and conserve financial resources to hedge against the future. There are two problems with this 1) we do not have financial resources to horde, 2) this approach will not build infrastructure or prepare us for the future. Cautious and conservative will not characterize our response. The other extreme would be to rapidly expand faculty and operations to position the Department for the economic turnaround when it arrives. This high risk approach has the potential to financially ruin the Department.Pathology will respond by with a middle strategy, neither too risky nor too cautious. We will look at both reducing expenses and generating new revenue. To address expense reduction, we will carefully review all of our current commitments to make sure that appropriate decisions have been made. Faculty should be aware that this review will include current faculty appointments, potential new faculty recruits, initial start-up packages, offers of bridging support etc. We will also delay some infrastructure support such as installing new audio-visual equipment in the current conference room. Revenue enhancement will be initiated by capitalizing on our current strengths such as increasing our outreach services and working with research faculty to increase grant funded salary support. Increasing the percent effort on grants helps to build infrastructure.None of this will be easy and all of us will need to work together to maintain our financial and academic success. Fortunately, the faculty and staff are outstanding, so that we can build on an existing strong infrastructure.
August 2008
Exercise
Not all of these blogs will be high-minded, visionary goals. Exercise is just an excellent idea, and an activity that I strongly support. Of course this is a highly personal decision whether one wishes to exercise or not. I personally try to exercise on a routine basis and have a target of doing exercise that elevates my heart rate over 140 beats per minute for 30 minutes, at least three times per week. In a good week, I will get in five exercise days. As age has progressed high impact activity causes more trouble, so I have pretty much abandoned soccer but still play hockey and use the elliptical. One of the very nice things about coming to Boston was Dr. Rogers making connections for me to play on a hockey team with her son. This was a nice welcome to the department.
Dan Remick, August 2008
July 2008
Most of us have trouble scheduling meetings with other physicians, administrators or collaborators. I recently became aware of a remarkably easy program to do scheduling among a group of people. The free, internet based program is called Doodle and I can highly recommend it. In my basic science lab we try and meet every two weeks for lab meetings, but finding an appropriate time when experiments are not going on was a challenge. Now I use Doodle to find the best time when everyone will be available. You can go directly to the website www.doodle.de or you can just google doodle calendar. To see Doodle in action, watch for an email coming to you where the department will schedule faculty meetings using Doodle. I know that this sounds like an infomercial, but the problem of scheduling meetings has been raised by more than one faculty member and this is an easy solution.
Dan Remick, July 2008
January 2008
We have recruited several new faculty and I just wanted to share my enthusiasm for these recruits. These will be listed in chronological order.
Cyrus Vaziri, Ph.D. joined us as an Associate Professor. Previously he had an appointment in Genetics and Genomics at Boston University. He will be relocating his research lab to the 4th floor of 670 Albany where he will continue his work on mechanisms of DNA repair.
Walther Pfeifer, M.D., just completed training in hematopathology at Beth Isreal Deaconess Hospital in the Harvard system and joined us as an Assistant Professor. He will assist with general surgical pathology.
Steven Bogen, M.D., Ph.D., formerly worked part time for the Department of Pathology but now is a full time Associate Professor of Pathology and will expand his work in Clinical Chemistry and Immunology.
Carmen Sarita-Reyes, M.D, finished her training in pediatric pathology with fellowships at Yale and New York University. She will be working in pediatric pathology as well as general surgical pathology and joins us as an Assistant Professor.
Mark Flomenbaum, M.D., Ph.D., has joined the faculty on a part time basis as an Associate Professor to become the Chief of Autopsy Services at Boston University and also become the course director of the dental school pathology course and the master’s pathology course.
John (Jiyoun) Kim, Ph.D. joined as a Research Assistant Professor coming from the University of Michigan. He will continue his work on the cockroach allergen induced asthma model.
Martin Kroll, M.D., comes from the University of Texas and becomes the Chief of Laboratory Medicine. Dr. Kroll has expertise in clinical chemistry and enjoys a national reputation as a leader in laboratory medicine. He will be a Professor of Pathology.
Eugene Pearlman, M.D., recently worked running the clinical labs at a hospital in Kentucky and will become the new Director of Outreach Operations with an appointment as an Associate Professor.
Deborah Stearns-Kurosawa, Ph.D., was recruited from the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. She investigates the immunopathology of serious infections with significant extramural grant support. She will have an appointment as an Assistant Professor.
Shinichiro Kurosawa, M.D., Ph.D., was also recruited from the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and investigates the same disease processes as his wife, Deborah. He will have an appointment as an Associate Professor.
Huihong Xu, M.D., did her anatomic and clinical pathology training at Boston Medical Center as well as a cytology fellowship. She will also have primary responsibility in surgical pathology and will have an appointment as an Assistant Professor.
Rachel Factor, M.D., did her training in anatomic pathology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital as well as a surgical pathology fellowship at the same institution. She has an interest in infectious disease pathology and will be working closely with investigators from the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory. She will have an appointment as an Instructor.
New Adjunct Faculty
Louis Liou , M.D., Ph.D., has been given an adjunct appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department. He formerly was in the Department of Urology and transferred his academic appointment, and grant support, to Pathology. He currently occupies research space on the 4th floor of 670 Albany Street.
We are very excited to be able to recruit these new faculty members, and more recruits are on the way.
Dan Remick, January 2008
October 2007
Year One: On September 1, 2007 I had been the Chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine for one year, making it an appropriate time to reflect. During the past year some things have stayed constant and some things have changed. At the start of the year significant challenges faced the Department and additional opportunities presented themselves as the year unfolded. Some key faculty members moved on to the next phase of their careers creating a challenge to continue to provide our traditional high level of service and as well as an opportunity to recruit excellent new faculty. Our new faculty, those who have already joined the Department and those who will soon join us, will add to our existing core of academic pathologists. We have consistently been able to deliver the quality of pathology excellence expected of our Department. Our educational endeavors have also been superb in the past year, with strong student evaluations from the major courses run by the Department. It has been very gratifying to read the positive student comments about our educational efforts. We have a challenge for the upcoming year to recruit pathology residents as the national competition increases for talent increases in order to maintain our high standards. We were fortunate in the past year to recruit eight new graduate students into the masters and Ph.D. programs. The research mission is also expanding, although progress in recruiting new faculty has been slower than anticipated while I have attended to other matters within the Department. In summary, the accomplishments of the first year have given me tremendous satisfaction, and the impetus to work even harder to enhance our triple mission of education, clinical service and scholarly activity. As I have told several people, the job has been a ton of fun.
Daniel Remick, October 2007
May 2007
Transition is occurring within the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Substantial growth will take place in the research activities of the department as we fill the new research space. We are aggressively recruiting new faculty with the hopes of filling our space on the fourth floor of 670 Albany by the end of 2008. Recruitment is also taking place to replace recently departed faculty. We are also recruiting new faculty to expand the service capacity of the Department. As we expand the service capacity new opportunities will be created for existing faculty to have academic time to pursue scholarly activities. As has been discussed at the faculty meeting, working at a major academic medical center carries a significant responsibility to contribute to the scholarly literature. While transition is occurring, the Department will still remain true to the core values of service, education and research.
Daniel Remick, May 2007
April 2007
This is the first of what will be many blogs. These short messages will be used to communicate with the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine on a regular basis. During this time of transition within the Department active, open communication will be enhanced through this 21st century medium. The blogs will supplement rather than replace other, ongoing events such as faculty meetings and emails. While departmental communication is a principal feature for the blog, a distinct advantage to this form of communication is that blogs are available to anyone with internet access including potential new graduate students, house officers and even faculty members. Communication works best when it flows both ways, otherwise it is merely dictating. If you have questions or wish to discuss an issue with me feel free to send an email or another form of communication.
Daniel Remick, April 2007
