Bio
I was appointed the first holder of the Deborah E. Addicott – John A. Kriewall and Betsy A. Haehl Family Professor in Pediatrics in February 2007, and the Katie and Paul Dougherty Medical Director of Palliative Care in August 2010. I relinquished these positions in August 2023, to become Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics.
I was previously the Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University, where I was the Arline and Pete Harman Professor, and the Adalyn Jay Chief of Staff at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. I held these posts from 1993-2006 before stepping down to return to a career of clinical care, teaching, and research.
I obtained both his MD and PhD from Duke University in 1970, and was a pediatric intern at the Children’s Hospital in Boston from 1970-1971. After spending two years as a Staff Associate at the National Institutes of Health, I returned to Children’s Hospital in 1973 as a pediatric resident. I completed a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Children’s Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and was named assistant, then associate, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.
In 1981, I was recruited to the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry where I was named the James P. Wilmot Associate Professor of Pediatric Oncology and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Oncology. I was promoted to Professor of Pediatrics in 1984 and Associate Chair for Research and Development in the Department of Pediatrics in 1987.
From 1985-1990, I was on the Scientific Advisory Board for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. I returned to the Board in 2000, and was its Chair from 2002 to 2006. I was also a member of the NIH Hematology II Study Section and was its Chair from 1987-1988. I served on the Board of Directors of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, and was a Board Member of the Ronald McDonald House and the Children’s Health Council in Palo Alto, California. I was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Montgomery Medical Venture Fund and Gamida Cell, a biotechnology company involved in expanded cord blood stem cells. I also served on the Steering and Selection Committees of the Pediatric Scientist Development Program, and I chaired the Interdisciplinary Initiatives Program Committee of Bio-X, a venture into research, education, and innovation across all scientific communities of Stanford University. I was on the Board of Trustees of the March of Dimes, and served on its Executive Committee. I am currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Morgridge Institute for Research, a private not-for-profit institute dedicated to supporting interdisciplinary medical research at the University of Wisconsin.
My research interests have included: clinical trials in leukemia, mechanisms of drug resistance, and determining the roles of proteins in predicting susceptibility to, diagnosing, and treating childhood illnesses such as brain tumors, leukemia, prematurity, and inflammatory diseases. In addition, I was the medical director of the pediatric palliative care program at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Stanford until August 2023.
I married Ilene Cohen in 1965, before starting medical school at Duke. We will be celebrating our 59th wedding anniversary in August. Our sons, Philip, age 56, a lawyer, and Jonathan, age 55, an accountant, were born at Duke Hospital. They are both married, to Nicole and Renee, respectively. They live in the Philadelphia area, and each has given us two grandchildren (Sara, 27, Ethan, 25, Brooke, 23, and Bradley, 20) and much pleasure to our lives.
