Penn MD-PhD Steering Committee
The Steering Committee is the core group that guides and shapes the MD-PhD program at Penn. The members are Skip Brass, MD, PhD (Director), Gary Koretzky, MD, PhD (Senior Associate Director), Mitch Weiss, MD, PhD (Associate Director) and Maggie Krall (Director of Administration). The three faculty members on the committee have all been through MD-PhD programs themselves and share a deep commitment to helping train the next generation of physician scientists. The committee meets weekly to discuss all aspects of the program, and the members are always available to talk with students individually.
Additional information about the Director and Associate Directors appears below.
Lawrence (Skip) Brass, MD, PhD
Associate Dean and Director
brass@mail.med.upenn.edu, 215-573-3540
Skip Brass is a graduate of Harvard College and received his MD and PhD from Case Western Reserve University in 1977. He stayed at Case Western for residency training in internal medicine before becoming a fellow in Hematology-Oncology at Penn in 1979. He has been a member of the Penn faculty since 1982 and is currently Professor of Medicine, Pharmacology and Pathology, and Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Medicine. Skip became Associate Director of the MD-PhD program in 1994, and stepped up to become the Director (and Associate Dean) in 1998. Skip's research interests lie in the fields of hemostasis and vascular biology. He is a past member of the NHLBI Hematology-II study section, and he currently serves on 4 editorial boards. In addition, he is an elected member of the ASCI and AAP, a former Established Investigator of the American Heart Association, and was a recipient of the IXth Biennial Award for Contributions to Hemostasis Research from the International Society of Thrombosis and Hemostasis. Skip has published more than 100 articles and reviews and holds two patents. He has trained numerous graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in his lab, and is a member of graduate groups in Pharmacological Sciences, Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics and Cell & Molecular Biology. He is active in graduate and medical education in a number of ways, including as co-director of Topics in Molecular Medicine, a course specially designed for first year MD-PhD students. In addition, he is active as an attending physician, course director for the hemostasis portions of Module II, and as a member of the advisory committee for Biomedical Graduate Studies, and the curriculum committee for the medical school. In 2001, Skip won the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching from the University of Pennsylvania. Skip also received teaching awards voted by the students of the School of Medicine in 1998, 2000, 2001 and 2002.
Gary Koretzky, MD, PhD
Associate Director
koretzky@mail.med.upenn.edu, 215-746-5522
Gary Koretzky is a graduate of Cornell University and received his MD and PhD (Immunology) from the University of Pennsylvania MSTP in 1984. He then moved to San Francisco as Resident in Internal Medicine. Gary stayed at UCSF to complete fellowship training in Rheumatology and additional research training. He began his independent career as a physician-scientist at the University of Iowa, and among other roles, served as the director of the MSTP there. Gary moved back to Penn in 1999 to serve as the Director of the Signal Transduction Program of the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute and Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Gary is the Senior Associate Director for the MD-PhD program and also the Chair of the Admissions Committee. His research explores the integration of signaling pathways in hematopoietic cells, and he is an internationally recognized leader in his field. He has published more than 145 manuscripts and holds two US patents. Dr. Koretzky serves on the editorial boards of six journals, and serves as Editor in Chief of Immunological Reviews. He is a member of numerous professional societies and awards include: Established Investigator, American Heart Association; Midwest Regional American Federation for Clinical Research Young Investigator Award, the American Association of Immunologists-PharMingen Investigator Award, The Stanley N. Cohen Biomedical Research Award of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow, and was named the first Leonard Jarett Professor of Pathology and Laboratory, Univ of Penn School of Medicine in 2004, and the Chief of the Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, in 2005. Dr. Koretzky was a member of the Immunobiology Study Section from 1996-2000, has served as Chair of two Special Study Sections of the NIH, and has served as an Ad hoc reviewer for several NIH review panels, the Medical Research Council, UK, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, UK, the Arthritis Foundation and the Italian Cancer Society. Gary has also been involved in issues related to physician scientists on the national level serving as Vice President, then President of the American Society for Clinical Research, and sitting on the MSTP Review Subcommittee of NIGMS. He has trained a large number of students and fellows, and served on numerous thesis committees. At Iowa he received a Collegiate Teaching Award. He is a member of the Immunology and the Cell and Molecular Biology graduate groups at Penn, and is active in teaching as co-director of Topics in Molecular Medicine and as a lecturer and preceptor in the immunology courses for medical and graduate students.
Mitch Weiss, MD, PhD
Associate Director
weissmi@email.chop.edu, 215-590-0565
Mitch Weiss received his BS Penn State University and his MD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. He did a residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at The Children's Hospital (Boston) and The Dana Farber Cancer Institute. His first faculty appointment was as an Instructor in Pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Boston and Dana Farber in 1994. He spent 2 years leading a research group at Ontogeny Inc., a biotechnology company in Cambridge, MA. Then, he returned to Penn in 2000 as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Hematology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In 2006, he was promoted to Associate Professor of Pediatrics with tenure. He became an Associate Director of the MD-PhD program in 2001, having previously served on the Advisory and Admissions Committees. Mitch's research interests are in the role of transcription factors in hematopoietic cell development and differentiation. He has published over 60 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals including Nature, Nature Genetics and The Journal of Biological Chemistry, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including an NIH Clinical Investigator Development Award and an American Society of Hematology Junior Faculty Award. Mitch serves on the editorial boards of Blood and The Journal of Clinical Investigation and on the Medical Advisory Boards for the Cooley's Anemia Foundation and the Daniella Maria Arturi Foundation (For Diamond Blackfan Anemia). In addition to conducting research, Dr. Weiss has clinical responsibilities in hematology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and is actively involved in teaching medical students, residents and fellows. He is a member of the Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Group.
