Dr. Jack A. Elias, 25 Over Fifty-five

LAB WORK: Dr. Jack A. Elias, a top administrator at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, is also considered a leader in research designed to be put to use in doctors’ offices and hospitals to improve health outcomes.
 / PBN PHOTO/MIKE SKORSKI
LAB WORK: Dr. Jack A. Elias, a top administrator at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, is also considered a leader in research designed to be put to use in doctors’ offices and hospitals to improve health outcomes.
 / PBN PHOTO/MIKE SKORSKI

25 Over Fifty-Five 2019 Award Winner
DR. JACK A. ELIAS | Senior vice president for health affairs and dean of medicine and biological sciences, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University


YEARS AGO, AS a resident at the University of Philadelphia, Dr. Jack A. Elias had a patient in his mid-50s with pulmonary fibrosis. “He was a wonderful man and it was really hard to tell him he had it – and that we, as a medical community, did not have a treatment,” said Elias. “I decided then: We’ve got to fix this.”

That early interaction with a patient with lung disease has spurred Elias toward research.

He has published over 230 peer-reviewed papers. He has several patents, with more pending. He’s held appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and was Yale School of Medicine’s chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine and chair of its department of medicine before coming to Brown University.

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Now the senior vice president for health affairs, dean of medicine and biological sciences, the Frank L. Day professor of biology and a professor of medicine at Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School, Elias is a leader in translational research, which translates into information that improves health outcomes.

“It’s not just science for the sake of science anymore,” Elias said. “We owe it to the people and colleagues in our community and the patients to take our knowledge as far as we can, to improve their lives.”

And Brown is doing well in this regard. Under Elias’ leadership, beginning in 2013, the awards on grants have more than doubled for Brown’s Division of Biology and Medicine. External research funding is up 88%.

Elias noted the importance of collaboration, pointing out that knowledge from a single entity may not lead to treatment. He said there is much to gain.

“As discoveries that go into the community get patented, they are translated as new companies in the Jewelry District in Rhode Island and other places,” he said. “This is an economic engine for the biotech community in Rhode Island.”

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