LEADING PHYSICIAN-SCIENTIST DR. BRADLEY A. MARON APPOINTED SENIOR ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR PRECISION MEDICINE AT UMSOM AND CO-DIRECTOR OF NEW UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND INSTITUTE FOR HEALTH COMPUTING (UM-IHC)

Dr. Maron also Named Director of Scientific Operations for UM­-IHC

Baltimore, May 8, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) Dean Mark T. Gladwin, MD, announced today that Bradley A. Maron, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham & Women's Hospital (BWH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS), and Co-Director of the Pulmonary Vascular Disease Center at the VA Boston Healthcare System, has been appointed Co-Director of the new Institute for Health Computing (UM-IHC), Director of Scientific Operations for the UM-IHC at UMSOM, as well as Senior Associate Dean for Precision Medicine at the UMSOM, effective May 1, 2023.

In his new role as Co-Director of the UM-IHC, Dr. Maron will work with University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), and University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) partners in establishing the new Institute as an international leader in the interdependent fields of clinical analytics and computational biology, using advanced data science technologies. He also will lead efforts to build centers within the Institute that focus on therapeutic target discovery, population health, pragmatic clinical trials, and an educational core curriculum that emphasizes scientific entrepreneurship.

Launched in November, 2022, UM-IHC seeks to leverage recent advances in network medicine, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning to create a premier learning healthcare system that evaluates both de-identified and secure digitized medical health data to improve outcomes for patients across the state of Maryland.

As Senior Associate Dean for Precision Medicine, Dr. Maron will oversee initiatives that build UMSOM's capacity to pursue research that advances the school's leadership in precision medicine, a new area of medicine that uses information captured from a patient's own biological and clinical profile to prevent, diagnose, or treat disease. These initiatives will include acquiring funds for operational advances, building new partnerships with key federal health agencies such as the NIH and FDA, identifying appropriate faculty recruits, and advocating for precision medicine approaches to clinical care. In collaboration with the Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education, Dr. Maron also will ensure that precision medicine is represented in the medical school curriculum and that UMSOM is preparing students to lead clinical and research initiatives in this emerging area.

Dr. Maron is a recognized physician-scientist in the rapidly growing fields of precision medicine, network medicine, and computational data analysis. Currently, he is engaged as the Co-Principal Investigator in an ongoing study entitled, "Network Medicine and Systems Pharmacology to Advance Precision Medicine in Combined Pulmonary Hypertension," and a second, as the Principal Investigator, entitled, "Personalized protein-protein interactomes and precision medicine in pulmonary arterial hypertension." He is also the co-author of numerous papers published in flagship journals for the American Heart Association, American Thoracic Society and Nature family discussing how multi-omics technologies can contribute to precision medicine

"Dr. Maron is a highly-effective and strategic leader who is ideally suited to move this new Institute forward," said Dean Gladwin, who also is Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor. "His experience and entrepreneurial management skills are perfectly aligned with our new vision to utilize disruptive technology and embrace and harness the power of clinical analytics and precision medicine to enhance patient care and provide populations health services."

In 2021, he was inducted into the American Society of Clinical Investigation, one of the oldest and most prestigious medical societies in the United States. At BWH, he was Vice-chair of the Cardiovascular Life Sciences Section in the Division of CV Medicine and Medical Director of the Cardiopulmonary Exercise Center. Additionally, he is the recipient of the Excellence in Tutoring Award, Eleanor and Miles Shore Scholar in Medicine fellowship, Chair's Research Award, and Distinguished Master Clinician Award and Master Clinician Award from BWH and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Maron is a widely-published and NIH-funded investigator, with co-authorship on more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. His research focuses on understanding novel molecular mechanisms involved in the pathobiology of cardiovascular disease. He is currently the principal investigator on three major NIH Project Grants, totaling over $1.6 million per year in funding. The American Heart Association, National Scleroderma Foundation, Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute and National Institutes of Health have supported his research.

In 2020, he led an international research program resulting in a publication in Lancet Respiratory Medicine entitled, "The association between pulmonary vascular resistance and clinical outcomes in patients with pulmonary hypertension: A retrospective cohort study." This work contributed to a change in the definition of the disease pulmonary hypertension. His seminal paper on "NEDD9 targets COL3A1 to promote endothelial fibrosis and pulmonary arterial hypertension" that was published in Science Translational Medicine, a marque journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, established the foundation for a U.S. patent and implicated NEDD9 as an important mediator of pulmonary vascular fibrosis and thrombosis. He also is the lead Editor of the seminal text, Pulmonary Hypertension: Basic Science to Clinical Medicine (Springer, 2016).

"We are in a transformative period for healthcare in Maryland, in which building computational systems using individual patient-level information to tailor disease prevention and treatment strategies is a reality," said Dr Maron. "The key is building systems with the capacity to improve health, wellness and longevity for all of the people of Maryland---that is our mission. I am extremely excited and fortunate to work with the Co-Directors from the University of Maryland College Park and University of Maryland Medical System in this endeavor. "

Dr. Maron is a graduate of Williams College and received his M.D. degree from The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University before completing an internal medicine residency at Boston Medical Center. He then finished cardiovascular medicine research and clinical fellowship programs at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH). Dr. Maron is an American Board of Internal Medicine-certified in Cardiovascular Medicine.

Now in its third century, the University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 as the first public medical school in the United States. It continues today as one of the fastest growing, top-tier biomedical research enterprises in the world -- with 46 academic departments, centers, institutes, and programs, and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians, scientists, and allied health professionals, including members of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and a distinguished two-time winner of the Albert E. Lasker Award in Medical Research. With an operating budget of more than $1.3 billion, the School of Medicine works closely in partnership with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide research-intensive, academic, and clinically based care for nearly 2 million patients each year. The School of Medicine has nearly $600 million in extramural funding, with most of its academic departments highly ranked among all medical schools in the nation in research funding. As one of the seven professional schools that make up the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine has a total population of nearly 9,000 faculty and staff, including 2,500 students, trainees, residents, and fellows. The combined School of Medicine and Medical System ("University of Maryland Medicine") has an annual budget of over $6 billion and an economic impact of nearly $20 billion on the state and local community. The School of Medicine, which ranks as the 8th highest among public medical schools in research productivity (according to the Association of American Medical Colleges profile) is an innovator in translational medicine, with 606 active patents and 52 start-up companies. In the latest U.S. News & World Report ranking of the Best Medical Schools, published in 2021, the UM School of Medicine is ranked #9 among the 92 public medical schools in the U.S., and in the top 15 percent (#27) of all 192 public and private U.S. medical schools. The School of Medicine works locally, nationally, and globally, with research and treatment facilities in 36 countries around the world. Visit medschool.umaryland.edu

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SOURCE University of Maryland School of Medicine