BUMC Faculty Promotions – January 2026
Congratulations to the following Medical Campus faculty on their January 2026 appointment or promotion.
BU School of Public Health
Professor
Patricia Fabian, ScD, Environmental Health, serves as associate director of the university’s Institute for Global Sustainability. Her research focuses on three general areas: building resilience to extreme heat through transdisciplinary research; understanding the complex role of the built environment on indoor air quality, energy and health in homes and schools; and airborne infectious disease transmission and mask interventions. Dr. Fabian founded the Sustainable Built Environment Lab, which conducts research on extreme heat resilience in cities, indoor air quality in schools and homes, and energy transitions in the built environment. Dr. Fabian leads multiple interdisciplinary teams and is a faculty affiliate of the BUSPH Center for Climate and Health, BU URBAN and the BU Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering.
Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
Associate Professor
Jessica Taylor, MD, Medicine/GIM, is a clinician-innovator recognized for her novel work in substance use disorders, HIV prevention and low-barrier care models. She is medical director of Faster Paths to Treatment at Boston Medical Center (BMC), the hospital’s innovative, low-barrier substance use disorder bridge clinic and recently supported the launch of an ED-based addiction consult service. She also directs HIV prevention programs at BMC. Dr. Taylor has developed and published protocols that are the first of their kind in the nation, including the bridge clinic implementation of the outpatient “72-hour rule methadone” protocol for opioid withdrawal management. Dr. Taylor has a long history of being funded by the Massachusetts Department of Health and is PI on two active projects through this funding source. She has been site PI or Co-I on eight federal grants.
Clinical Associate Professor
Kara Smith, MD, MSCI, Neurology, is a clinician-scientist specializing in the treatment of patients with Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders. As chief of the movement disorders division in the department of neurology, she joins BU and Boston Medical Center (BMC) from UMass Chan Medical School where she built an interdisciplinary clinical research program and co-directed the division and fellowship program since 2015. Dr. Smith’s research interests include speech and language markers in neurodegenerative diseases including mild cognitive impairment and Parkinson’s disease, as well as non-pharmacological approaches such as exercise and music-based interventions to address refractory symptoms in patients with movement disorders. She has received funding from the NIH for her work on speech markers of cognitive impairment in Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Smith also has a passion for teaching and mentoring, and she will serve as program director of BMC’s Movement Disorders Fellowship.
Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine
Clinical Associate Professor
Xiaofei Zhu, BDS, DST, CAGS, Endodontics, is a clinician-educator-scientist who serves as research director of endodontics in addition to treating patients with diseases of the dental pulp and surrounding root tissues. He is Co-I on multiple industry sponsored and collaborative studies, including projects funded by Sonendo, the American Association of Endodontics (AAE) Foundation as well as a reviewer for more than a dozen professional dental and endodontic journals. Dr. Zhu is the first GSDM faculty member to receive the highly competitive AAE Endodontic Educator Fellowship Award that supports promising early career educators within the US for five years.