Bio
Philip Pizzo, MD, is the David and Susan Heckerman Professor Emeritus. Pizzo served as Dean of the Stanford School of Medicine from April 2001 to December 1, 2012. He was Founding Director of the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute from 2012 - 2022. Pizzo began rabbinical studies at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California in 2022 and studies in Spiritual Care and Counseling at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2024.
Dr. Pizzo career focused on the diagnosis, management, prevention and treatment of childhood cancers and the infectious complications that occur in children whose immune systems are compromised by cancer and AIDS. He has been a leader in academic medicine and in longevity and the future of higher education.
Pizzo received his MD degree with Honors and Distinction in Research from the University of Rochester in 1970 and completed an internship and residency at the Boston Children’s Hospital. He was a fellow in pediatric oncology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and served as head of the NCI’s infectious disease section, chief of pediatric oncology, and scientific director for the Division of Clinical Sciences between. Before joining Stanford in 2001, he was the physician-in-chief of Boston Children’s Hospital and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, where he was also the Thomas Morgan Rotch Professor of Pediatrics.
Dr. Pizzo is the author of more than 650 scientific articles and 16 books and monographs. He also served as Editor-in-Chief of Current Opinion in Pediatrics from 2012 - 2019. He co-led the National Academy of Medicine 2011 report Relieving Pain in America: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education and Research; and “Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences at the End of Life” that was published in 2015.
Pizzo has received numerous awards and honors, including the Public Health Service Outstanding Service Medal in 1995, the Barbara Bohen Pfiefer Award for Scientific Excellence in 1991, the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross Award in 2008, the Ronald McDonald Charities “Award of Excellence” in 2009, and the John and Emma Bonica Public Service Award in 2013. He is the 2012 recipient of the John Howland Award, the highest honor for lifetime achievement bestowed by the American Pediatric Society. In 2019 he received the John Stearns Medal from the New York Academy of Medicine. Pizzo received the 2021 International Immunocompromised Host Society’s Lifetime Distinguished Career Award. He received the Dean’s Medal from the University of Rochester in 2023.
Pizzo has been elected to the Association of American Physicians, the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the American Pediatric Society, the National Academy of Medicine. He has served as Chair of the Association of Academic Health Centers and Chair of the Council of Deans of the Association of American Medical Colleges. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Society for Clinical Oncology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He was President of the International Immunocompromised Host Society between1998 – 2011, and he served on the Governing Board for the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine from 2004 - 2012. Pizzo was elected to the Board of Trustees of the University of Rochester from 2009 - 2022 and the Board of Overseers of Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey from 2010 - 2022. He served Academic Advisory Council for Merritt Hawkins between 2015 - 2022., and the Advisory Board to the Milken Institute Center on Aging from 2015 - 2022. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research from 2012- 2022. In 2015 Pizzo was elected to the Board of Directors of Global Blood Therapeutics through 2023, and in 2019 he was elected to the Board of Directors of Hillel at Stanford through 2023.
