December 12, 2003

In General

Carlos Camargo, MD, of MGH Emergency Services, recently was named president of the American College of Epidemiology. He is the first emergency medicine physician to lead the college. Camargo also was selected recently to serve on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This committee is responsible for reviewing the Dietary Guidelines for Americans report, which advises the general public about ways to improve overall health through proper nutrition.

The MGH Operating Room of the Future received a team design award at the Symposium on Health Care Design held at the World Trade Center in Boston. The OR of the Future was recognized for its potential to result in profound changes in surgical and anesthesiology practice as a real-time learning laboratory.

A. Benedict Cosimi, MD, chief of the MGH Transplant Surgery, has been elected president of the New England Surgical Society.

Jatin Vyas, MD, PhD, of the MGH Infectious Disease Unit, was awarded the Pfizer Fellowship in Infectious Diseases. This award will fund Vyas' work over the next three years. Vyas is the first MGHer to receive this award.

David Altshuler, MD, PhD, and Gary Ruvkun, PhD, both of the MGH Department of Molecular Biology, recently received the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation Pinnacle Program Project Award. They received this award for their study of the contributing genetic causes of obesity and diabetes in humans.