Six researchers at Hopkins have been elected to the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academies of Science. Election to the Institute is one of the most prestigious honors in biomedicine.
Ronald Brookmeyer, Frederick Burkle, Jr., Kay Dickersin, and Lynn Goldman of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, as well as Aravinda Chakravarti and Andrew Feinberg of the School of Medicine, were chosen.
New members are elected to the Institute each year by the existing membership, which currently consists of 1,692 of the country's leading biomedical researchers, physicians, and policy makers.
The Institue of Medicine was chartered by Congress in 1970 to advise the government and public on matters concerning biology, medicine, and public health. The opinions of the Institute and its committees is intended to be unbiased and nonpartisan.
Brookmeyer works in the Department of Biostatistics where he is developing mathematical models of diseases in populations. His models extend beyond infectious diseases such as HIV to include Alzheimer's disease and bioterrorism.
Burkle, who is on staff at the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response, works on disaster management and emergency response across the globe.
Chakravarti is a geneticist whose research focuses on analysis of genomic variation and the contribution of genes to a variety of medical disorders.
Dickersin works on improving clinical trials in areas including peer review and meta-analysis. She is on faculty in the Center for Clinical Trials.
Feinberg's research focuses on the relationship between epigenetics, or cellular information outside of the genetic code, and complex human diseases.
Goldman is a pediatrician and epidemiologist with interests in the links between environment and health, in particular children's health.
Hopkins claimed more honorees than any other university. The National Institutes of Health were close behind with five.
