An infectious-disease specialist who is currently chair of the Department of Medicine at Brown University has been chosen to succeed Dr. Eli Y. Adashi as dean of medicine and biological sciences, effective upon his departure July 1.
Brown President Ruth J. Simmons introduced Dr. Edward J. Wing as the new dean at a news conference last week in the Maddock Alumni Center.
Wing is the Joukowsky Family Professor of Medicine at Brown and physician-in-chief at Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital, as well as executive physician-in-chief at the Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Women & Infants Hospital, all of which are affiliated with Brown.
“We are fortunate to have found someone with Ed Wing’s stature, intellect, proven experience, and familiarity with Brown and our hospital partners,” Simmons said in a news release. “I am persuaded that he has the highest expectations for the Division of Biology and Medicine, that he will maintain the appropriate standards for academic medicine, and that, in implementing our strategic plan, he will strengthen both. I look forward to working with him to achieve those aims.”
Wing’s selection comes just over three months after Adashi, who had served as dean since January 2005, announced that he would be stepping down. Adashi was chosen through a national search that took years and involved a wide range of people involved with the medical school; Wing, by contrast, was picked by an eight-member faculty committee, plus an alumni representative, that had been charged with finding a new dean within Brown.
Simmons faced plenty of controversy for keeping the search internal, but in an interview, she said she was convinced “that we had excellent people here,” and the result proved that.
“It’s always very easy to assume that somewhere out there, among people we don’t know, there are much stronger candidates,” she said. “But that is a pitfall that many people fall prey to.” Not only does Brown have talent “every bit as good” as top universities across the country, Simmons added, but given Brown’s ongoing efforts to grow its medical and life science programs and the proposed Lifespan-Care New England merger, “I thought, maybe this is a moment to find somebody who has knowledge of the institutional context, and maybe if we can get someone internal, we wouldn’t lose any momentum.”
“We are working hard to try to build the medical school and improve academic medicine here in Rhode Island,” she said, “and the thought of having someone come in from outside and take two years to learn the state, the city, the hospitals, the campus – I just saw that as lost time. We’re in a hurry to get things done, and that said to me, an outstanding internal person would have a leg up.”
Wing will lead Brown’s fast-growing Division of Biology and Medicine, with an annual budget of $129 million, 769 campus- and hospital-based faculty, and more than 1,200 community-based faculty, as well as 660 undergraduate students and more than 1,000 medical residents, fellows, graduate students, postdoctoral students and medical students.
Along with The Warren Alpert Medical School, the division includes the Program in Biology and the Program in Public Health. Simmons said she considers it “one of our absolute highest priorities,” both because of its potential for the university and for its impact on health care, employment and economic development.
Since 2004, Brown has invested more than $230 million in expanding its life sciences faculty, facilities and equipment, and it has increased its life-science research space by more than 75 percent with the opening of two new labs.
As dean, Wing will provide leadership for continued investments in the life sciences, including the planned construction of a new medical school facility. He will also oversee the medical school’s partnerships with local hospitals and health care systems and will serve as the chief academic officer for each of those partnerships.
“We have a chance here to grow one of the best medical schools in the country,” Wing said at last week’s news conference. He noted that Brown has risen from 43rd to 31st in the U.S. News & World Report ranking of U.S. medical schools, and that it already attracts both “terrific clinicians” and “some of the best scientists,” adding: “I think the potential is enormous. We certainly have the potential to be one of the very best.”
Once considered a “boutique” program, the medical school is growing its enrollment from 70 to 100 students per incoming class. Working with the hospitals, the Division of Biology and Medicine has doubled its external funding in the past five years, to $200 million per year.
Brown also has a strong tradition of promoting primary care and Wing said he expects “a bit of a swing back” to that emphasis in the coming years, but he also expects cutting-edge science, specialty care and international health programs to continue to flourish.
A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Wing completed his postgraduate training as a resident at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital – now part of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston – and as a fellow in infectious diseases at Stanford University.
Wing then moved on to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where he rose through the ranks from assistant professor of medicine in 1977 to executive vice chairman and vice chairman for clinical programs and interim chairman of the Department of Medicine from 1995 to 1997. He joined Brown in 1998 as chair of the Department of Medicine.
Wing specializes in infectious diseases and has been a reviewer for more than 20 medical journals, as well as the author or co-author of more than 90 peer-reviewed articles and presentations, and chapters in 18 books. He has received research grants from the National Institutes of Health and several foundations and companies.
Wing is married to Rena Rimsky Wing, a researcher in the behavioral management of obesity, particularly its relationship to type 2 diabetes. They have two sons, Jonathan and Kenneth. •
