New Department of Medicine Chair Named

After his presentation at the Department of Medicine’s Grand Rounds, newly appointed chair Dr. Douglas Vaughan (from left) chats with his two predecessors, Drs. Lewis Landsberg and Larry Jameson.

New Department of Medicine Chair Named

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Douglas E. Vaughan, MD, as the Irving S. Cutter Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine, effective June 1.

A 1980 graduate of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dr. Vaughan completed his training in internal medicine at Parkland Memorial Hospital and the Dallas VA Medical Center in 1984. He served as a chief resident there as well under Dr. Donald W. Seldin in 1983–84. From 1984–89, he completed a fellowship in cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a research fellowship in medicine at Harvard, a clinical fellowship in interventional cardiology at the Brigham, and a fellowship in the Center for Thrombosis and Vascular Research at the University of Leuven, Belgium.

Before coming to the Feinberg School, Dr. Vaughan was a faculty member at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and an attending physician at the university’s medical center since 1993. He became professor of medicine and pharmacology in 1997 and C. Sidney Burwell Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine in 1999.

Dr. Vaughan is an accomplished clinician, teacher, and investigator. His research interests include the role of the plasminogen activator system in cardiovascular disease and tissue remodeling, the biochemistry and molecular biology of mammalian fibrinolysis, and regulation of vascular gene expression. Dr. Vaughan has a long record of continuous NIH funding. He is currently principal investigator on four major grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) addressing research questions ranging from the basic mechanisms of cardiovascular disease to potential innovative therapies of these conditions and holds several patents relating to control of thrombosis and clot dissolution. He is principal investigator on one of three NHLBI-sponsored Specialized Centers of Clinically Oriented Research in Hemostatic and Thrombotic Diseases and also directs Vanderbilt’s participation in the NHLBI-sponsored Cardiac Cell Therapy Research Network (CCTRN). He served as a permanent member of the NHLBI’s Experimental Cardiovascular Science Study Section and chaired its Vascular Cell and Molecular Biology Study Section in 2003–04. Dr. Vaughan serves on a number of editorial boards including Circulation, the premier journal in cardiovascular medicine. Among his many honors, Dr. Vaughan has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI), the Association of American Professors (AAP), and the Association of University Cardiologists.