Alumni News

By

Julia Hickey Mijangos, Alumni Writer, and Bonita Eaton Enochs, Editor

1957
See Alumni in Print to read about the latest book by Henry Buchwald, emeritus professor of surgery and biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota. He was PI for the 21-year Program on the Surgical Control of the Hyperlipidemias, the first randomized clinical trial to demonstrate that cholesterol lowering by his partial ileal bypass operation resulted in reductions in cardiovascular disease and prolonged life expectancy. He holds 20 patents for bioengineering devices, including the first implantable infusion pump used in insulin delivery and continuous chemotherapy delivery. Henry, who also has a PhD, served as the Owen H. and Sarah Davidson Wangensteen Chair in Experimental Surgery at the University of Minnesota.

1967
In March 2022 Gordon Noel received the Flame Award for Outstanding Teaching, one of three Oregon Health & Science University faculty members chosen by the entire student body. He is emeritus professor of medicine there. In May 2022 he published “Learning the Art of Medicine, a Memoir,” about his years as a medical student, internal medicine resident, endocrinology fellow, and faculty member (see Alumni in Print). Gordon dedicated his memoir in part to several VP&S faculty, including Andrew Frantz, Hamilton Southworth, Thomas Jacobs, Arthur Wertheim, and Earle Wheaton. He added that it was written “with great respect and gratitude for the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Class of 1967 and the Department of Medicine residents and faculty members who taught us, many of whom became my colleagues and make cameo appearances” in the memoir.

1974
Stanley Chang, the K.K. Tse and Ku Teh Ying Professor of Ophthalmology and former Edward S. Harkness Professor and chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at VP&S, received the Gonin Medal, an international award given to an ophthalmologist every four years by the International Council of Ophthalmology. Named in honor of Swiss ophthalmologist Jules Gonin, MD, a pioneer in retinal detachment surgery, the medal represents the highest achievement in ophthalmology. Stanley received the diploma for the medal and presented a special lecture at a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, in March 2022 and was formally presented with the medal during the virtual World Ophthalmology Congress in September 2022. The medal was established in 1937 by the University of Lausanne and the Swiss Society of Ophthalmology, and the first medal was bestowed in 1941. Among the 21 awardees to date, Stanley is only the fifth American to receive the medal. He also received Ophthalmology Innovation Source’s Lifetime Innovator Award for his work in the advancement of vitreoretinal surgery and the pioneering techniques used today. The award was presented in October 2021.

1975
The David Roye, MD, Pride Visiting Medical Student Scholarship was established with a seed gift from David Roye. The scholarship will support a rising fourth-year medical student who, before completing medical school, will spend a month under the guidance of orthopedic surgery faculty. Preference will be given to applicants who are leaders/active in the LGBTQ+ community. “The goal,” said David, “is to provide students with understanding and support so that they feel welcome in our community of orthopedic surgery. This scholarship will allow us to attract students who are active in the LGBTQ+ community, to develop their interest, and to recruit these young leaders to our specialty.” David is former chief of the pediatric orthopedic surgery division.

1978
Jonathan Newmark, a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, composed a chamber opera that received its workshop premiere at the Operation Opera festival in Spokane, Washington, in June 2022. The opera, “Haber’s Law,” is about Fritz Haber, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of chemical warfare, and his wife Clara, a pacifist and the first German female PhD in chemistry. The opera was performed by the Four Corners Ensemble. It probably is the first feminist chemical warfare opera, Jonathan writes, and includes what may be the first musical setting of an actual Nobel Prize speech. “While on active duty I taught the story of Fritz and Clara Haber to over 15,000 students over 16 years and on three continents as part of the Army’s instructional team in the medical management of chemical and biological casualties.” Jonathan continues his involvement in the medical chemical defense community as medical advisor to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which supervises the civilian medical chemical defense program for the United States.

1981
Robert M. Golub was promoted to the position of executive deputy editor of JAMA. He also is professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. 

Steven Orland has been installed as the 230th president of the Medical Society of New Jersey. He has been a member of the society since 1987 and member of its Board of Trustees since 2017, serving on various councils and committees. He is a board-certified urologist with New Jersey Urology, with practices in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and Mercer County, New Jersey.

1982
See Alumni in Print to read about a book by John Markowitz. John is professor of clinical psychiatry at VP&S and a research psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He has spent decades conducting psychotherapy research to study mood, anxiety, personality, and trauma-related disorders.

1986 
P. David Adelson has joined the faculty of the West Virginia University School of Medicine Department of Neurosurgery. He is also vice chair of the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute and executive director of the WVU Medicine Children’s Neuroscience Center of Excellence.

1999
Hackensack Meridian Hackensack University Medical Center named Shahid R. Aziz director of the division of oral and maxillofacial surgery. In February 2022, Shahid helped cut the ribbon and open the hospital’s new oral and maxillofacial surgery center, which will offer full inpatient and outpatient oral and maxillofacial surgical services for children and adults, with a specialty in facial trauma and reconstruction surgery. Shahid is president of the New Jersey Society of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons and chair of the Section of Dentistry and Oral Health of the New York Academy of Medicine. He is co-founder and president of the New Jersey-based non-profit Smile Bangladesh, which provides free surgery to children and adults with cleft lip and palate deformities in Bangladesh. Since starting Smile Bangladesh more than 16 years ago, Dr. Aziz has led a small team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses on 24 surgical missions and has treated more than 1,600 patients. He received the 2017 American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons Humanitarian Award for his work in Bangladesh and in global surgery. He has authored or co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and 22 book chapters.

2002
Clara (Holt) Keegan was named the Vermont Family Physician of the Year at the annual meeting of the Vermont Medical Society on Nov. 4 in Stowe, Vermont. She was recognized for her empathetic and compassionate approach to patient care and for her dedication to education in the area of sexual and reproductive health. Clara is associate professor of family medicine at the Larner College of Medicine and core faculty for the University of Vermont family medicine residency. She lives in Essex Junction, Vermont, with her husband, Mark, and their two teenage sons, Tim and Will.

2009
Student Life at the University of Michigan has named Lindsey Mortenson its first chief mental health officer. After serving as acting executive director and medical director for University Health Service, she was named associate executive director of University Health Service. In her new roles, Lindsey will supervise the clinical, diagnostic, and administrative services of University Health Service and counseling and psychological services. Lindsey, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at UM, completed residency training in adult psychiatry there and served as outpatient chief resident. 
She received the national psychiatry resident award for excellence in education, 
teaching, and administration. 

2011 PhD/2012 MD
Hasina Outtz Reed received a 2022 Young Physician-Scientist Award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

2011
The Idaho Academy of Family Physicians selected Rebecca Katzman as the 2022 Idaho Family Physician of the Year. She practices full-spectrum family medicine at a critical access hospital in north-central Idaho. 

2015 
See Alumni in Print to read about a book co-authored by Adjoa Smalls-Mantey. Adjoa, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at VP&S, also has had work appear on ABC News. After college, she enrolled in Columbia’s MD/PhD program in partnership with the NIH/Oxford/Cambridge Scholars Program. She earned a DPhil degree in pathology from the University of Oxford, where she studied HIV immunology, before completing her MD degree at VP&S. She completed a residency in psychiatry at Mount Sinai then returned to Columbia as a public psychiatry fellow. She now practices emergency psychiatry at Columbia, Bellevue Hospital, and NewYork-Presbyterian’s Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. 

2016 
Margaret Dowd, a graduate of the Columbia-Bassett Program, has joined the Bassett Healthcare Network as an attending physician. She started Bassett’s Mohs micrographic surgery practice. She also is a VP&S dermatology faculty member and is teaching current students in the Columbia-Bassett Program. 

2017
See Alumni in Print about Anna DeForest’s debut novel. Publishers Weekly included Anna among its Writers to Watch list for Fall 2022. Anna is a neurologist and palliative care physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Her writing has appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Paris Review.