As Executive Vice President for Health Sciences at Georgetown University and Executive Dean of the School of Medicine, Howard Federoff, MD, PhD, oversees a biomedical research organization with $138 million in external research funding in 2005. As EVP, he is responsible for advancing the educational and research missions of Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC), and working effectively with the leadership of MedStar Health, its clinical partner. GUMC comprises a School of Medicine (founded in 1851), a School of Nursing & Health Studies, the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization (BGRO), and Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Prior to his arrival at Georgetown in April 2007, Dr. Federoff held appointments as Senior Associate Dean for Basic Research; Professor of Neurology, Medicine Microbiology and Immunology; and Professor of Oncology and Genetics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and as Founding Director of the Center for Aging and Development Biology at the Aab Institution of Biomedical Sciences at Rochester. After joining the Rochester faculty in 1995, he also served as Director of the University of Rochester’s Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program and as Founding Chief of the Division of Molecular Medicine and Gene Therapy.

Dr. Federoff’s research interests include gene therapy and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and prion diseases; he holds a number of medical patents with a number of other patents pending. His research has received support from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Department of Defense, among other sources. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and served as a reviewer for many of these journals, and currently serves on the editorial boards of five such journals, including Brain and Mind, Experimental Neurology, and Gene Therapy. In 2006, Dr. Federoff was named Chair of the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee.

Before joining the Rochester community, he was Associate Professor of Medicine and Neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, from which he received MS, PhD, and MD degrees. He did his internship, residency, and clinical and research fellowships at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and gained clinical experience at Massachusetts General and elsewhere.