Howard Rockman, MD, the Edward S. Orgain Professor of Cardiology, has agreed to serve as director of the Duke Cardiovascular Research Center (CVRC), effective immediately.
The CVRC, which resides within the Department of Medicine, was formed in 2011 to provide an intellectual home for cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary, bench-oriented research by faculty on this campus as well as at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore.
The mission of the CVRC is to solidify, enhance and support outstanding cardiovascular research from the basic discovery end of the translational research spectrum.
"Howard is perfect fit for the leadership role of the center," said Dr. Klotman. "He is an accomplished investigator, with much success in advancing our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of hypertrophy and heart failure."
Dr. Rockman earned his bachelor of science (biochemistry) and M.D. degrees from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He joined the faculty at Duke in 1999 after faculty appointments at the University of California, San Diego and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 1999 and the Association of American Physicians in 2006, and he received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Heart Association in 2011. In 2012 he became editor-in-chief of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Dr. Rogers added that Rockman also is a respected former chief of the Division of Cardiology, and as editor-in-chief of JCI, "he has a unique vantage point from which to view the direction of medical science."
The CVRC was previously directed by Tom Coffman, who stepped down from his roles in the Department and as chief of the Division of Nephrology to become dean-designate of Duke-NUS.
Learn more about the Duke Cardiovascular Research Center at http://cvrc.center.duke.edu