Dr. David Salant Selected as Robert Dawson Evans Distinguished Professor of Medicine
Congratulations to Dr. David Salant who has been selected as a Robert Dawson Evans Distinguished Professor of Medicine. The goal of this honorific designation is to acknowledge faculty at the Professorial rank whose academic achievements have had an exceptional impact on their field in research, education, or clinical care. The award includes a stipend of $125,000 to further support their respective academic programs. The honorees include:
Emelia Benjamin, M.D. (Cardiology)
David Felson, M.D. (Rheumatology)
Michael Paasche-Orlow, M.D. (General Internal Medicine)
Thomas Perls, M.D. (Geriatrics)
David Salant, M.D. (Nephrology)
Dr. Salant is Professor of Medicine and Vice-Chair for Research in the Department of Medicine. He was the inaugural Norman G. Levinsky Professor of Medicine and served as the Chief of Nephrology from 1987 to 2019. Dr. Salant received his medical degree from University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and completed his clinical training at Johannesburg General Hospital. He received his research training at Boston University with Dr. William G. Couser and joined BU’s nephrology faculty in 1979. Dr. Salant is an internationally renowned physician-scientist and an acclaimed educator. His research primarily explores the immune basis for glomerular diseases and the mechanisms of podocyte injury. He was among the first to identify podocytes as the primary target of injury in antibody-mediated glomerular diseases. In a landmark New England Journal of Medicine paper in 2009, Drs. Salant, Beck and colleagues described their discovery of the target antigen in membranous nephropathy and showed that a high proportion of patients with membranous nephropathy have circulating autoantibodies to the phospholipase A2 receptor on human podocytes. Dr. Salant is a past chairman of the ABIM Sub-specialty Board of Examiners in Nephrology, and recipient of several national and international awards for his scientific contributions, including election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association, the John P. Peters Award from the American Society of Nephrology, the Jean Hamburger Award from the International Society of Nephrology, the Donald W. Seldin Award from the National Kidney Foundation, and the Marilyn Farquhar Award at the 11th Annual Podocyte Conference.