Pitt Faculty Members Awarded Distinguished Professorships

The Provost’s Office recently announced that nine Pitt faculty members have been appointed as Distinguished Professors, a distinction that affirms extraordinary, internationally recognized scholarly attainment in a discipline or field. Another four faculty members were named Distinguished Service Professors, a title that recognizes distinctive contributions and outstanding service (e.g., professional, regional, national, international) to the University community in support of its multifaceted teaching/research/service mission, as well as performance excellence in the faculty member’s department or school and national stature in his or her discipline or field.

The appointments were made between Nov. 1, 2013, and Sept. 1, 2014, based on recommendations to the chancellor from Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor
Patricia E. Beeson. The designees and their new titles follow. 

Clifford Brubaker
Distinguished Service Professor of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Clifford Brubaker has served as a professor and dean of Pitt’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences since 1991. He has professorial appointments in rehabilitation science, neurological surgery, regenerative medicine, and Pitt’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Brubaker received his PhD degree in 1968 in exercise physiology from the University of Oregon. A codirector of the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center, Brubaker has worked in the areas of biomechanics, rehabilitation engineering, and assistive technology for nearly 30 years. He has been awarded four U.S. patents for inventions relating to mobility and seating.

Mark Gladwin
Distinguished Professor of Medicine
Mark Gladwin is chief of the Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine Division within the School of Medicine and director of the University’s Vascular Medicine Institute. His clinical research focuses on pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary complications of sickle cell disease. He is principal investigator on the multi-center clinical trials Walk-PHASST (Pulmonary Hypertension and Sickle Sildenafil Therapy Trial) and DeNOVO (Delivery of NO for Vaso-Occlusive pain crisis in sickle cell disease). Gladwin received his MD from the University of Miami Honors Program in Medical Education in 1991. He later served as the chief of the Pulmonary and Vascular Medicine Branch within the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Tao Han
Distinguished Professor of High Energy Physics
Tao Han is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and is director of the PITTsburgh Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology Center. His research field is elementary particle physics theory, and he explores fundamental questions that include the origin of mass for elementary particles, fundamental forces and their unification, and the nature of particle dark matter. In addition, he has worked for decades on the Higgs boson, a particle believed to be the fundamental building block of the universe. Han earned his master’s degree and doctorate in physics from Nankai University, China, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, respectively.

Jonas Johnson
Distinguished Service Professor of Otolaryngology
Jonas Johnson is The Dr. Eugene N. Myers Professor and Chairman of Otolaryngology in the School of Medicine. He is also a professor of radiation oncology and of oral and maxillofacial surgery. Johnson is an expert in surgical strategies to treat head and neck cancer, including the imaging of head and neck tumors, and the role of radiation in head and neck cancer. He has been director or codirector of more than 80 courses for students, residents, fellows and senior physicians. Johnson received his medical degree from the State University of New York Upstate Medical Center, Syracuse. He is a past president of the American Head and Neck Society.

Scott Lephart
Distinguished Service Professor of Sports Medicine and Nutrition
Scott Lephart serves as professor and chair of the Department of Sports Medicine and Nutrition within Pitt’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. He is also director of the Neuromuscular Research Laboratory and the Warrior Human Performance Research Center. Lephart holds a secondary professor appointment in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. His research interests include musculoskeletal sports and military injury prevention and performance optimization. He has more than 25 years of experience in neuromuscular and biomechanical analysis of human movement associated with musculoskeletal injury, surgery, rehabilitation, and prevention. Lephart earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees in sports medicine at the University of Virginia.

Jeremy Levy
Distinguished Professor of Condensed Matter Physics
Jeremy Levy is a professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, as well as founding director of the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute. His research focuses on exploring novel phenomena in solid state systems and his areas of interest include physical systems capable of quantum information processing and quantum computation and nanoscale control over metal-insulator transition in polar/non-polar oxide heterostructures. Levy, who received his PhD in physics from the University of California-Santa Barbara, is also leading a $1.8 million research effort to study composite materials formed from graphene and complex oxide materials.

John Norton
Distinguished Professor of History and Philosophy
John Norton is a former chair of Pitt’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science in the Dietrich School and currently is director of the University’s Center for Philosophy of Science. He was a contributing editor to the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, volumes 3 and 4, and was recently associate editor and coeditor of Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. He received his PhD from the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of New South Wales. His dissertation was on the history of general relativity. He is editor for philosophy of physics for the Stanford On-line Encyclopedia of Philosophy and is a founder of philsci-archive.pitt.edu 

Joel Schuman
Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology
Joel Schuman is the Eye & Ear Foundation Professor and Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology, School of Medicine. He is also director of both the UPMC Eye Center and the Louis J. Fox Center for Vision Restoration. Schuman, a graduate of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, is considered to be one of the nation’s leading authorities on the treatment of glaucoma. He completed his residency at the Medical College of Virginia and completed a post-graduate fellowship in glaucoma at Boston’s Howe Laboratory of Ophthalmology. His research interests include imaging of the eye, laser-tissue interactions, aqueous outflow, and clinical pharmacology.

Steven Shapiro
Distinguished Professor of Medicine
Steven Shapiro is the executive vice president and chief medical and scientific officer, UPMC and the president of the Physician Services Division. He earned his medical degree from the University of Chicago, completed his internship, medical residency, chief residency, and pulmonary and critical care fellowship all at Barnes-Jewish Hospital of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He is a professor of medicine in Pitt’s School of Medicine and his research focuses on novel molecular pathways of inflammation, tissue destruction, and host defense in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, infectious diseases, vascular disease, and lung cancer. His efforts have led to several new potential therapies that are in clinical trials.

Andrew Schwartz
Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology
Andrew Schwartz has been with the University since 2002 and has adjunct appointments with Pitt’s Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, the Department of Bioengineering, the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, School of Medicine. He received his PhD in physiology from the University of Minnesota and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. While there, Schwartz was instrumental in developing the basis for three-dimensional trajectory representation in the motor cortex. He is a senior investigator with the Pitt research team that developed a robotic arm controlled by an individual’s thoughts, which stimulate neural activity.

Rocky Tuan
Distinguished Professor of Orthopedic Surgery
Rocky Tuan is the Arthur J. Rooney, Sr. Professor and executive vice chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, School of Medicine; the director of Pitt’s Center for Cellular and Molecular Engineering; the associate director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine; and the director of the Center for Military Medicine Research. He also is a professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Swanson School of Engineering. Tuan, who received his PhD from the Rockefeller University in New York, edits BDRC: Embryo Today and is the founding editor-in-chief of Stem Cell Research and Therapy. His research interests include skeletal development, stem cells, growth factor signaling, and bone-biomaterial interaction.

Simon Watkins
Distinguished Professor of Cell Biology
Simon Watkins is the founder and director of the Center for Biologic Imaging at the University of Pittsburgh and a member of the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. He is also a professor and vice chair of the Department of Cell Biology, School of Medicine. Watkins, who is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Starzl Transplant Institute, received his PhD in neurobiology from Newcastle University in England. He did postgraduate research at Pasteur Institute in Paris, and at the Harvard Medical School Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His research involves optical imaging and its application to studying basic cell biologic processes in the immune system.

Marshall Webster
Distinguished Service Professor of Surgery
Marshall Webster is senior vice president of UPMC and serves on its board of directors. He received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, interned at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, completed his surgical residency at the University of Pittsburgh, and is board certified in general, thoracic, and vascular surgery. After two years of active duty as a surgeon in the U.S. Navy, he returned to Pitt, where he was the Mark M. Ravitch Chair of Surgery. His research and primary practice interests included cerebrovascular and aortic aneurysm disease. He is the author or coauthor of more than 150 journal articles and book chapters.