The medical school has named two new department chairs – one who is taking over an existing department and another who is heading up a new department.
David Riddle, PhD, has been named the chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences. Dr Riddle, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, has held several leadership roles at the medical school including the department’s vice chair and chair of the Medical Student Performance Committee.
Dr. Riddle began his new role on February 24, 2020. He replaces Dale Vandre, PhD, the department’s founding chair, who retired in February.
Dr. Riddle is a graduate of the University of North Carolina. He earned his doctorate in neurosciences from the University of Michigan and completed two postdoctoral fellowships at Duke University Medical Center. He joined the medical school in 2014 and serves as the assistant dean for Academic Success. He will continue to fulfill his responsibilities in the assistant dean role until his replacement is named.
Tom Rothstein, MD, PhD, has been named the founding chair of the Department of Investigative Medicine. Dr. Rothstein, who joined the medical school in 2016, has served as assistant dean for Investigative Medicine and has led the growth of the medical school’s laboratory-based research, including four principal investigators and more than a dozen staff members.
Dr. Rothstein began his new role on February 24, 2020.
Dr. Rothstein earned his MD and PhD through the Medical Scientist Training Program at Duke University. He completed advanced clinical training in Internal Medicine and Hematology/Oncology at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC and Beth Israel Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston. He also has taken advanced research training at the National Cancer Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Rothstein has worked as a professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology at Boston University School of Medicine/Boston Medical Center. Before his arrival to the medical school, Dr. Rothstein worked as an investigator at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, a professor in the Elmezzi Graduate School of Molecular Medicine, and a director of the Center for Oncology and Cell Biology.
“I’m very grateful for the opportunity to lead this new department, which will strengthen and expand research activity at WMed,” Dr. Rothstein said. “This is truly an exciting time and we look forward as a department to helping to build a web of investigational science throughout the school and the community.”