Principal Investigator – Harry P. Selker, MD, MSPH. Dr. Selker is Executive Director for the Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, Chief of the Division of Clinical Care Research, and Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Health Services Research at Tufts Medical Center. He is also Professor of Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine and Director of its Graduate Program in Clinical Research at the Tufts Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences. His clinical practice is in the Pratt Diagnostic Clinic at Tufts Medical Center. In his research, Dr. Selker studies the factors that affect clinical care and its outcomes, and develops treatment strategies, decision aids, and computer-based systems for improving care. He is known for a series of studies of the factors influencing emergency cardiac care, including clinical, socioeconomic, and gender issues, and is particularly known for the development of cardiac “clinical predictive instruments.” These decision aids provide emergency physicians with predictions of their patients’ key outcomes, for real-time use in clinical care. Two of these, the ACI-TIPI (acute cardiac ischemia time-insensitive predictive instrument) and TPI (thrombolytic predictive instrument), are in electrocardiographs in use world-wide. He also is known for the development of information systems that provide the results of the ACI-TIPI and TPI as feedback to improve clinical care. In addition, Dr. Selker’s research includes work on fundamental issues of clinical study design, data analysis, and combination of clinical data and computer-based mathematical models that predict clinical outcomes. Dr. Selker is also an active teacher and mentor of clinical researchers. His PhD graduate program in clinical research in a biomedical graduate school was the first of its kind, and he has been involved nationally in the promotion of clinical research and clinical research training. He holds leadership roles in professional and scientific societies and serves on a variety of governmental and organizational committees and panels.
Program Director - Jonathan M. Davis, MD, joined Tufts Medical Center in June 2006 as Chief of Newborn Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics, after several years as Associate Chairman of Pediatrics, and Chairman of the IRB at Winthrop-University Hospital/SUNY Stonybrook School of Medicine in Mineola, New York. Dr. Davis’s recent research is on the delivery of antioxidant enzymes and genes to the neonatal lung. He is the first investigator to help develop a novel antioxidant protein in the laboratory and then bring the protein through animal studies and human trials, with dramatic improvements in neonatal outcome. Dr. Davis has a long history of NIH funding and has served on multiple committees for NHLBI and NICHD. His expertise in pediatrics and newborn medicine will broaden the scope of the CTRC and provide needed expertise for studies involving highly vulnerable subjects.
Associate Director – Roger A. Fielding, PhD, is Director and Senior Scientist of the Nutrition, Exercise Physiology, and Sarcopenia (NEPS) Laboratory, and a Professor of Nutrition at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at The USDA Human Nutrition and Research Center on Aging. Dr. Fielding has extensive clinical trial experience at the HNRCA, and is thus ideally suited for the role of coordinating the integration of the CTRC with the HNRCA. Dr. Fielding’s research interests include the underlying mechanisms contributing to the age-associated decline in skeletal muscle mass, the resultant impact on function, and the potential role of exercise and physical activity on attenuating this process. Dr. Fielding oversaw the development of the interventions for the LIFE (Lifestyle Interventions for Elders) Pilot study and served as the Chair of the LIFE Intervention and Operations Committee. He also is a co-investigator and chair of the Body Composition Analysis Committeefor the NIA-funded “Calerie” trial.
Associate Director – David J. Greenblatt, MD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM). He also is Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Anesthesia, and Director of the Medical School’s clinical pharmacology research and training program. Dr. Greenblatt has specific faculty responsibility for the Core Laboratory, including the newly instituted Genomics Facility. He also provides guidance for aspects of the CTRC Program relating to pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, drug metabolism, and psychopharmacology. Dr. Greenblatt has been an active CTRC investigator since his arrival at TUSM in 1979, with well over 100 original research publications resulting from his CTRC work. From 1995 to 2003, Dr. Greenblatt served as CTRC Program Director, and became Associate Program Director in 2003 in order to devote more time to his own very active research program.
Associate Director– Tamsin A. Knox, MD, MPH, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at TUSM, and became Associate Program Director in 2004. Her primary role is the training and education of investigators and study coordinators. Dr. Knox is a gastroenterologist and hepatologist whose research focuses on nutritional and gastrointestinal aspects of HIV infection, including liver disease. She was a long-term co-director of the Nutrition for Healthy Living Study, a longitudinal cohort of more than 880 HIV-positive persons to determine the effects of nutritional status on the outcome of HIV infection. Dr. Knox currently studies cytochrome metabolism in HIV/HCV coinfected persons and serves as a co-director of the Tufts-Brown CFAR core on nutrition, metabolism, and gastrointestinal function. Dr. Knox was elected a Fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association in May 2007.
Associate Director – Amy Simon, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at TUSM, became Associate Director in 2007. Her focus is on bridging basic science and clinical research. She is a Pulmonary and Critical Care specialist, and a basic scientist, with a strong clinical and research interest in asthma. She is the Director of the Asthma Center at Tufts Medical Center, and is engaged in industry-sponsored and investigator-initiated clinical research. Dr. Simon holds a joint appointment in the Physiology Department at the Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences, and studies the molecular mechanisms by which the airway epithelium directs allergic inflammation by utilizing cell culture and animal models of asthma. In addition, she is collaborating with biotechnology companies to develop novel inhalational treatments for asthma.
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