Home » Achievement » Solomon A. Berson Medical Alumni Achievement Award

Honorees

  • 2009 Basic Science Award: Joel Moss, M.D., Ph.D. '72
  • 2009 Clinical Science Award: Ann Marie Schmidt, M.D. '83
  • 2009 Health Science Award: Lonnie R. Bristow, M.D. '57, M.A.C.P.

Dr. Joel Moss was born in Brooklyn, earned his BA with Honors in Chemistry summa cum laude from Brandeis University, and then came to NYU School of Medicine, where he earned his MD and PhD degrees in 1972, with his dissertation in biochemistry. After medical residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he became a Research Associate and Pulmonary Fellow at the National Institutes of Health. He has remained at the NIH to the present, rising over the years from staff investigator in the laboratory of cellular metabolism, to Head of the section on molecular mechanism, ultimately becoming Chief of the pulmonary-critical care branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in 1994.  He is now Deputy Chief of the Translational Medicine Branch of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

 

Dr. Moss’s research has focused on the following areas: reconstitution of protein trafficking systems with 20-kDa guanine nucleotide-binding ADP-ribosylation factors and associated regulatory proteins; the role of bacterial virulence factors in lung disease; genetic factors in lung disease; pathogenesis of lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM); regulation of ADP-ribosylation cycles in animal cells; and characterization and cloning of ADP-ribosyltransferases and ADP-ribosylargenine hydrolases.

 

Dr. Moss has served in many advisory positions to national and international organizations, as well as leading NIH intramural committees, many editorial boards and chairing international conferences. In addition to his scholarly and research activities, he serves, from 1979 to the present, as a physician in the medical intensive care unit at the Clinical Center of the NIH.

 

Dr. Moss has received innumerable honors and awards. To mention just a few, he received the Melvin M. Snider Chemistry Award, NYU’s Founders Day Award, was named the Passano Foundation Young Scientist, received the Public Health Service Commendation Medal, the American Federation for Clinical Research Young Investigator Award, the Public Health Service Meritorious Service Medal, the National Institutes of Health Directors Award, the EEO Special Achievement Award, and the Chiba Medical Society Silver Medal.

 

It is with great pride that today we add to that list of honors by presenting Joel Moss, Class of 1972, with the Solomon A Berson Alumni Achievement Award in Basic Science.

 

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Dr. Ann Marie Schmidt earned her BA in biology and history summa cum laude from NYU’s Washington Square College and her MD degree with honors from NYU School of Medicine in 1983. She remained at NYU to complete her medical residency and chief residency, as well as fellowship in hematology and medical oncology, then moved to Columbia University, joining the department of physiology and cellular biophysics, and the department of medicine’s division of molecular medicine, before accepting a position in the department of surgery, where since 2003 she has been the Chief of the division of surgical science and the Gerald and Janet Carrus Professor of Surgical Science.

 

Dr. Schmidt’s basic and translational research has focused on the contribution of “RAGE,” (receptor for advanced glycation end-products), a cell-surface receptor that exacerbates inflammation and damage when activated, to heart disease-related vascular injury, particularly in diabetes. She has studied RAGE and its relationship to inflammatory and immune disorders, peripheral nerve injury and regeneration, neurodegenerative diseases, and tumors.

 

Dr. Schmidt has served on advisory committees and Chaired conferences for the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, the Juvenile Diabetes Association, the American Diabetes Association, and other national and international scientific organizations.

 

In addition to having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha; Dr. Schmidt has received many honors and awards. For example, she received the Harold and Golden Lamport Prize for Excellence in Clinical Research; the Schunk Prize for Medicine from Justus-Liebig University; the Mary Jane Kugel Award for Juvenile Diabetes Research; and honorary membership in Omnicron Kappa Upsilon of the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine.

 

In recognition of her scholarly achievements, it is with great pride and pleasure that we present Ann Marie Schmidt, Class of 1983, with the Solomon A Berson Alumni Achievement Award in Clinical Science.

 


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Dr. Lonnie R. Bristow earned his BS from CCNY and his MD from NYU School of Medicine in 1957. He pursued internal medicine residency training in San Francisco and in New York, and later an occupational medicine residency at UCSF. He was on the attending staff at Doctor’s Hospital and Brookside Hospital, where for a time he directed the coronary care unit. For more than 40 years he practiced medicine and occupational medicine.

 

Dr. Bristow has been President of the AMA and Chair of its Board of Trustees. He was appointed by President Clinton to Chair the Board of Regents of the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences and was on its Quality of Health Care in America Committee, which authored the report, “To Err is Human.” He chaired the IOM committee that encouraged increasing diversity in the healthcare workforce, and then co-chaired, with Dr. Louis Sullivan, former Secretary of Health and Human Services, a group to implement that agenda. He served on the IOM’s committee that reviewed the association between asbestos and colorectal, laryngeal, esophageal, pharyngeal and stomach cancers. He also chaired the IOM Committee on Medical Evaluation of Veterans for Disability Compensation. As an indication of his international standing, Dr. Bristow traveled to South Africa and Lesotho at the request of the U.S. State Department to speak on HIV prevention and education. Recently, he pressured the Joint Chiefs of Staff to allow military physicians and chaplains to work together to identify potential abuses, such as maltreatment of prisoners.

 

Dr. Bristow’s many honors and awards include election to Alpha Omega Alpha; Mastership in the American College of Physicians; California’s Most Distinguished Internist Awards; an honorary Doctor of Military Medicine; and honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Morehouse, CCNY and Wayne State. In recognition of his extensive and extraordinary pro bono activities, he has been elected a “National Associate” of the National Research Council of the National Academies.

 

A true leader of modern American medicine, Dr. Bristow has made his alma mater proud. It is therefore with great pleasure that we present Lonnie R. Bristow, Class of 1957, with the Solomon A. Berson Alumni Achievement Award in Health Science.

 

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