Two faculty members at UCSD’s School of Medicine are among 60 elected to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine.
Dr. Daniel R. Masys, associate clinical professor of medicine and director of biomedical informatics, was elected an active member.
He is an expert in bioinformatics, making vast amounts of complex information more accessible by using computers. His research focuses on Internet-accessible medical records and health information, Internet utilities for conducting clinical research, and the analytical informatics of gene expression profiling using microarray techniques.
Dr. William L. Nyhan was elected a senior member. Nyhan is a professor of pediatrics and founding chair of the School of Medicine’s department of pediatrics.
Nyhan was a pioneer in the study and treatment of metabolic diseases in children. He first described Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, a condition caused by a defective gene that is characterized by self-mutilating behaviors like head-banging and finger-biting.
Active members of the institute are elected on the basis of their professional achievement. They conduct studies, conferences and other institute inquiries.
Senior members are those with nonvoting status and those over age 66.
Currently, 19 other UCSD faculty members are members of the institute.
AT&T joins affiliates program at UCSD’s engineering school
UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering announced Oct. 16 that AT&T has joined its Corporate Affiliates Program, a service designed to build partnerships between industry and the Jacobs school.
The CAP program is designed to bring together business leaders of top organizations, UCSD students and faculty to foster a comprehensive effort in telecommunication, biotechnology and engineering, according to AT&T’s Rich Goldberg.
The dean of the Jacobs school said that the school is happy to have an industry leader like AT&T in the program.
The CAP office helps member companies find faculty with related research interests. It also provides specialized access to students for company human resource needs and helps coordinate internship opportunities.
For more information on CAP, visit http://www.soe.ucsd.edu/corp_partners.
UCSD gastroenterologist Henry O. Wheeler dies
Henry O. Wheeler, a 77-year-old gastroenterologist and one of the original members of the UCSD School of Medicine faculty, died Oct. 12 at Thornton Hospital in La Jolla.
Wheeler graduated from Cal Tech. His undergraduate studies were interrupted by a three-year service in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1943 to 1946. He earned his doctorate degree at Harvard Medical School.
Wheeler’s research interests were in the physiology of the liver and liver disease. He completed fundamental observations about biliary secretion, bile flow and basic transport physiology.
Wheeler was also interested in photography. He traveled extensively and his photos have been published in scientific publications and are exhibited at the UCSD Faculty Club and the UCSD medical centers in La Jolla and Hillcrest.
He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Isabel; his daughters Mary Wheeler of Washington, D.C. and Dr. Charlotte Wheeler of Portland, Ore.; his sister Katharine Meserve of San Clemente, Calif.; and five nieces and nephews.
There will be no memorial service. In lieu of flowers, the family is asking for contributions to the Henry O. Wheeler fund, which will support the educational program of the UCSD School of Medicine and the University Art Gallery.
Research network created for sharing brain images
The National Center for Research Resources, a component of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded over $20 million to a consortium of universities organized by UCSD to build a high-performance computer network to share information on the studies of diseases of the brain.
Researchers linked over the network will share high-resolution animal and human brain images to allow analysis and comparison, allowing for cross-institutional integration of data that can advance research on diseases such as multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
UCSD will establish the BIRN Coordinating Center with information technology contributions from the NSF-supported National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, the San Diego Supercomputer Center and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.
