Mayo Clinic Trustees Honor Named Professors

Friday, November 14, 2008

ROCHESTER, Minn. — The Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees today recognized four awardees of Mayo Clinic named professorships.

Sundeep Khosla, M.D., a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist, received the Dr. Francis Chucker and Nathan Landow Research Professorship, which Dr. Chucker established in 2005 in honor of his friend Nathan Landow, a highly successful real estate developer and philanthropist from Washington, D.C. Dr. Chucker, a founding member of The Doctors Mayo Society and Mayo Alumni Laureates, settled in Washington and established an internal medicine and peripheral vascular disease practice after completing a fellowship at Mayo Clinic.

Dr. Khosla, who joined Mayo Clinic in 1988, is associate director for Research at Mayo Clinic and also is associate director of the Clinical Research Unit. He has served as chair of the National Institutes of Health Skeletal Biology Development and Disease Study Section and has been appointed to the Council of the National Institute on Aging. He has also been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He currently serves as associate editor of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research and as a member of the editorial boards for the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism and Endocrine Reviews. His research interests include mechanisms of postmenopausal and age-related bone loss, sex steroid regulation of bone metabolism and osteoblast/stem cell biology. Dr. Khosla holds one U.S. patent.

Walter Wilson, M.D., a specialist in infectious diseases, received the Edward C. Rosenow, III, M.D. Professorship in the Art of Medicine, which was established in 2007 by Bruce E. and Martha O. Clinton. Bruce Clinton is chairman and chief executive officer of The Clinton Companies, a Chicago real estate development and property management company. The Clintons have been Mayo Clinic patients for more than four decades and are members of the Campaign for Mayo Clinic Chicago Leadership Team. They are patients both in Rochester and Jacksonville and have developed a special relationship with Dr. Rosenow, their longtime physician.

Dr. Wilson is a recipient of the Excellence in Leadership Award, Henry S. Plummer Award and the Mayo Distinguished Clinician Award at Mayo Clinic. Active in many professional and community organizations, Dr. Wilson currently serves in positions for the American Heart Association, International Committee on Treatment of Infective Endocarditis, Task Force for Infectious Diseases and International Society of Infective Endocarditis. He has been teaching infectious diseases courses at Mayo Clinic for more than 30 years, receiving the Teacher of the Year award several times, as well as the Mayo Medical School Distinguished Faculty Service Award and Distinguished Lecturer Medical Sciences recognition, and has been named to the Teacher of the Year Hall of Fame. Dr. Wilson's research interests include infective endocarditis, animal models of infection and new antimicrobial agents.

Diane F. Jelinek, Ph.D., a consultant in the Department of Immunology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, received the Gene and Mary Lou Kurtz Professorship in Multiple Myeloma Research. Gene Kurtz founded Houston Foam Plastics, one of the nation's largest producers of custom foam packaging, construction and insulation materials, in 1970. The Kurtzes are Mayo Clinic friends, patients and benefactors. Their leadership is evident in their philanthropic contributions and participation in the Mayo Clinic Cancer Leadership Council.

Dr. Jelinek, who joined Mayo Clinic in 1991, is dean of Mayo Graduate School and a member of the Mayo Clinic Rochester Executive Board. She has served in organizations that include the American Association for Cancer Research, American Association of Immunologists and American Society of Hematology. She has been active as a scientific reviewer for numerous scholarly journals and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and in addition to extensive ad hoc review service, she completed a four-year term as a charter member of the Cellular and Molecular Immunology B study section. Throughout her career, Dr. Jelinek has been funded by the NIH for her work on normal and malignant B lymphocytes. She currently serves as the program director for a project on the monoclonal gammopathies funded by the National Cancer Institute.

Douglas Packer, M.D., director of Heart Rhythm Services at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, received the John M. Nasseff, Sr., Professorship in Cardiology in Honor of Dr. Burton Onofrio. Nasseff is a well-known philanthropist who worked his way from unloading boxcars at West Publishing Co. to become its vice president of engineering and development. He has contributed to several of Mayo Clinic's education and research programs, including rheumatology and neurologic surgery research, and named this professorship in honor of Dr. Onofrio, a Mayo Clinic neurosurgeon who performed lifesaving surgery for Nasseff's youngest son, Arthur.

Dr. Packer, director of Mayo Clinic's Translational Electrophysiology Research Laboratory, is active in the National Heart Rhythm Society where he is the first vice president and 2009 president-elect. He has served on editorial boards for the American Heart Journal, the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology, HeartRhythm journal and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and on National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute working groups on atrial fibrillation. He is the national principal investigator of the Catheter Ablation Versus Antiarrhythmic Drug Therapy for Atrial Fibrillation (CABANA) pilot study and the North American STOP AF Clinical Trial of Catheter Cyroballoon Ablation for Atrial Fibrillation. Dr. Packer's translational work focuses on autologous fibroblast modulation of electrical impulse propagation in the heart and the mechanisms and ablation of atrial fibrillation and other cardiac arrhythmias. His clinical work investigates 4/5 dimensional integrated image-guided ablation and the development of new approaches and energy sources for the modification of cardiac tissue in patients with cardiac arrhythmias. Dr. Packer holds two U.S. patents and one European patent.

Named professorships represent the highest academic distinction for a Mayo Clinic faculty member. Faculty are appointed to a named professorship through nomination and endorsement of their peers and then confirmed by Mayo Clinic senior leadership. Appointed individuals are recognized for distinguished achievement in their specialty areas and service to the institution.

These professorships are named in honor of the benefactors. The gift funds, which may be unrestricted or focused on a specific medical area, are held in endowment. All income from the endowed professorships supports Mayo Clinic programs in medical education and research.

The Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees, a 30-member group of public representatives and Mayo physicians and administrators, is responsible for patient care, medical education and research activities at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla.; Rochester, Minn.; and Scottsdale and Phoenix, Ariz.

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