Paul R. Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment and HMS instructor in Global Health and Social Medicine, who died of lymphoma at his Boston home on Nov. 13, 2011. He was 67. Paul Robert Epstein was born on Nov. 16, 1943, in Manhattan, the older of two children of Nathan Epstein, a physician, and Edith Hillman Boxill, a music therapist. At the progressive private school he attended, the Little Red School House, his classmates included future 1960s anti-war activists Angela Davis and Kathy Boudin. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School, Cornell University and...
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Curtis Prout, former assistant dean for student affairs at Harvard Medical School, died peacefully at home in Manchester, MA on December 2, 2011. Prout practiced primary care medicine for almost 70 years. He joined the faculty of HMS in 1949 and later served as assistant dean for student affairs for seven years. Prout was also the chief of medicine and associate director at Harvard University Health Services from 1961 to 1972. He was on staff at Brigham and Women’s Hospital from 1947 to 2010. Prout received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1937 and earned his medical degree...
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David Williams, chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology and director of Translational Research at Children’s, and associate chair of Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has been selected by the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) as the recipient of the 2012 Outstanding Achievement Award. The ASGCT’s highest honor, the Outstanding Achievement Award recognizes one Society member per year, who has achieved pioneering research success, specific high impact accomplishments, or a lifetime of significant contributions to the field of gene and cell therapy. Williams was nominated by his peers for his exceptional body of work, ranging from...
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The Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation is seeking applications for two fellowships with application deadlines of March 16, 2012: The Junior Faculty MeRIT Fellowship is intended to support junior faculty member develop an autism-related independent research program. Each applicant must hold an MD or MD/PhD, be a faculty member within the first five years of a career at Harvard Medical School or an affiliated institution, have at least two years of postdoctoral research experience and be actively engaged in research related to autism. Fellows will receive $75,000 each year for two years, plus $10,000 each year for supplies. The...
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Recent publications from HMS researchers
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Eating a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids appears to be associated with a slower decline in annual rates of distance and retinal visual acuities in adults with retinitis pigmentosa (associated with loss of night vision and loss of side vision) who also took vitamin A over four-to-six years, according to a study published online Feb. 13 in Archives of Ophthalmology. About one in 4,000 people, or about 2 million worldwide, have retinitis pigmentosa. The condition typically results in night blindness in adolescence before the loss of side vision in young adulthood, followed by tunnel vision as it worsens...
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