Two doctors named Gilman Scholars

Last Wednesday President Ron Daniels sent an email to the University community announcing the appointment of Peter Pronovost and Jeremy Nathans as Hopkins’s newest Gilman Scholars.

Pronovost and Nathans will now join the 17 other notable Hopkins faculty who have received this prestigious designation. The honor, named after Hopkins’ first president, Daniel Coit Gilman, serves to recognize and celebrate distinguished individuals among Hopkins faculty.

In order to be nominated as a Gilman Scholar, one must be chosen by the standing Gilman Scholars. After this initial nomination is made, President Daniels and interim Provost Jonathan A. Bagger review the candidates’ credentials carefully.

This year’s recipients of the honor are both professors in the School of Medicine. However, the designation is open to faculty members in all academic divisions as well as professional staff at the Applied Physics Laboratory.

Pronovost is a professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is also a professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health as well as author of the book Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor’s Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care from the Inside Out.

His work is largely dedicated to discovering methods for hospitals to enhance patients’ safety. Among his many accomplishments, he has created a simple checklist that has been successful in preventing central line-associated bloodstream infections around the world, which had previously caused an estimated 30,000 deaths a year just in the United States.

In 2008, Pronovost received the MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, an award often called a “genius grant.” That same year, Time magazine named him one of their 100 Most Influential People.

He was also appointed to be a director at the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins University in June 2011. In addition, he is the senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Nathans is a professor of molecular biology and genetics, neuroscience and ophthalmology in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

His discoveries have significantly contributed to the world’s understanding of human vision. Through exploring the biological mechanisms that make up human eyesight, Nathans was able to distinguish the genes that code for color-vision receptors in the light-sensing cones of the retina. This discovery has led to new understandings of the development, function and survival of the retina. Through these conclusions, Nathans has been able to show the genetic causes of color blindness.

Nathans has been groundbreaking in his research on human retinal diseases, most notably of which are Stargardt disease and macular dystrophy.

He is a current member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among many accolades, he has received the Cogan Award from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, the Young Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience, the Newcomb-Cleveland Prize from the AAAS, the Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience from the McGovern Institute at MIT and the Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence from the American Medical Student Association.

Pronovost’s and Nathan’s designations as Gilman Scholars will stand for as long as they remain at Hopkins.