February 26, 2009
Reingold Named Inaugural Holder of Global Health and Infectious Diseases Chair
Arthur Reingold
Arthur Reingold, associate dean for research at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and head of the School's Epidemiology Division, has been named the first-ever holder of the Edward E. Penhoet Distinguished Chair in Global Public Health and Infectious Diseases, School of Public Health Dean Stephen Shortell announced in February.
The purpose of the multidisciplinary, rotating five-year chair is to support the teaching, research, and scholarship of an eminent faculty member in the School of Public Health or the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, or a faculty member who has a joint appointment in both departments. The chair was established with $1.5 million in donations from friends and colleagues of professor emeritus and former dean Edward E. Penhoet, and $1.5 million in matching support from the Hewlett Foundation.
"We are very grateful to the many donors and the matching funds from the Hewlett Foundation for creating this endowed chair," said Shortell. "Art Reingold is a superb choice to serve as the first chair holder given his leadership nationally and internationally in combating infectious disease."
A board-certified physician, Reingold has devoted the last 25 years to the study and prevention of infectious diseases in the United States and in developing countries throughout the world. He began his career as an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, working there for eight years. While at CDC, he worked domestically on Toxic Shock Syndrome, Legionnaires' disease, bacterial meningitis, fungal infections, and non-tuberculous mycobacterial infections and internationally on epidemic meningitis in West Africa and Nepal.
Since joining the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1987, Reingold has worked on a variety of emerging and re-emerging infections in the United States; on acute rheumatic fever in New Zealand; and on AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and acute respiratory infections in Brazil, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, India, and Indonesia. He has directed the National Institutes of Health Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program at UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco since the program's inception in 1988. He has also served as principal investigator of the UC Berkeley Center for Infectious Disease and Emergency Readiness since the center's establishment in 2002. Reingold regularly teaches courses on epidemiologic methods, outbreak investigation, and the application of epidemiologic methods in developing countries. He was recently elected president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research.
"I am thrilled to have been awarded this signal honor, the more so because of the extraordinarily high regard I have for Ed Penhoet and his many contributions in science and health," said Reingold. "I hope to use the chair to help support our Center for Global Public Health, as well as our truly world class graduate students."
In honor of the establishment of the Edward E. Penhoet Distinguished Chair, Dean Stephen Shortell (right) presents former dean Edward E. Penhoet with a commemorative inscription.
Edward E. Penhoet, in whose honor the chair is named, is a cofounder of the pioneering biotechnology firm Chiron Corporation. He served as the company's president and chief executive officer from its formation in 1981 until April 1998. For 10 years prior to founding Chiron, he was a faculty member of UC Berkeley's Biochemistry Department, and from 1998 to 2002 he served as dean of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Penhoet was president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation from 2004 to 2007. He currently serves as commercial life sciences representative on the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine's Independent Citizens Oversight Committee, of which he was previously vice chair.
A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, Penhoet has coauthored more than 50 scientific papers and articles. Penhoet's friends and colleagues raised the funds to establish the chair in recognition of his distinction as a scientific leader and entrepreneurial visionary and his commitment to improving health globally.