August 25, 1998
Two IU School of Medicine Faculty Awarded Endowed Professorships
INDIANAPOLIS-Two Indiana University School of Medicine faculty members were awarded named professorships at the Aug. 21 meeting of the Indiana University Board of Trustees. Mary Dinauer, M.D., Ph.D., was named the Nora Letzter Professor of Pediatrics and Ora Pescovitz, M.D., was named the Edwin Letzter Professor of Pediatrics.
The professorships were established in memoriam in 1997 by the Riley Memorial Association. Nora and Edwin Letzter, who founded the Indianapolis Machinery Co. in 1926, were supportive of several service and charitable organizations, including the RMA.
Dr. Dinauer is a specialist in blood disorders and is one of the world's leading experts on chronic granulomatous disease (CGD). CGD is characterized by a genetic defect that makes the body's white blood cells have difficulty in killing bacteria and fungi that other people's systems fight without difficulty. Dr. Dinauer is studying gene therapy as a means to cure individuals with CGD and has had preliminary success in non-human laboratory trials.
Dr. Dinauer is an investigator at Indiana University's Herman B Wells Center for Pediatric Research and is a professor of pediatrics and of medical and molecular genetics. She is a member of the Midwest Society of Pediatric Research, the American Society of Hematology and is a councilor of the American Society of Clinical Investigators. She earned the Excellence in Pediatrics Research Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1995. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and completed her residency at the University of California, San Francisco and her fellowship at Children's Hospital in Boston.
Dr. Pescovitz is director of the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology/Diabetology and is a professor of pediatrics and of physiology and biophysics at the Indiana University School of Medicine. She is a nationally recognized pediatric endocrinologist and recently discovered a novel hormone that may be involved in both reproduction and metabolism. She specializes in the treatment of precocious puberty, a condition in which children begin puberty at a young age because of hormonal imbalances. She also treats children with growth and other metabolic disorders.
Dr. Pescovitz is vice president of the Society for Pediatric Research, and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, and the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society. She was awarded a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health, 1991-96. Dr. Pescovitz is a graduate of the Northwestern University Medical School and completed her residency at the University of Minnesota and Children's Hospital National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She completed a fellowship in endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health. An endowed named professorship is the hallmark of success for an outstanding faculty member who sets the standards in his or her discipline. It is one of the highest honors a university can bestow on a member of its faculty.
Contact: Ellen Gullett
317-274-7722
egullett@iupui.edu
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