LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Dr. Jesse Roman, professor of medicine at Emory University in Atlanta, is the new chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. Dr. Edward Halperin, dean of the UofL School of Medicine, announced today that Roman’s appointment is effective Sept. 1.
“When we sought a worthy successor to our longstanding Chairman of Medicine, Dr. Richard Redinger, I envisioned a physician-scholar-teacher of the first rank; someone with a commitment to the ideals of academic medicine,” Dean Halperin said. “We have hired such a person.”
“Search committee chairman Dr. Donald Miller, director of the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, committee vice-chair Dr. Kerri Remmel, and the entire search committee, evaluated an exceptional pool of candidates for this very important position within the School of Medicine.”
Roman is the director of Emory’s Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine. He also is the director for the Emory Center for Respiratory Health and the director for research of the Emory Interstitial Lung Disease Program.
Roman received his medical degree from the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine. He completed his residency at the San Juan Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He then joined the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship Program at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He joined the Emory faculty in 1991.
During Roman’s seven-year tenure as division director at Emory, the division witnessed a dramatic growth in its faculty which doubled in size, expanded its fellowship program now funded by two NIH-sponsored institutional training grants, increased its research portfolio eight-fold and attracted several national multi-center awards, standardized medical critical care delivery at four hospitals, and established several new clinical-research enterprises in lung disorders.
He has published extensively in the areas of lung tissue remodeling and inflammation and on the role of extracellular matrices in the control of lung resident cell functions and tumor cells. He is the author of more than 120 scientific writings and his work has been continuously funded by federal organizations. His national reputation is evidenced by his membership in VA and National Institutes of Health study sections. He has served on important committees of the American Thoracic Society and the American College of Chest Physicians.
Roman serves as a member of the steering committee of the NIH-sponsored Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Clinical Research Network and the scientific advisory committee of the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation. Roman also serves as President of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation. He is a member of the editorial board for Clinical and Translational Science, the Open Biology Journal and Chest.