Thu H. Le, a professor of medicine, has been jointly appointed the John J. Kuiper Distinguished Professor and Chief of the Division of Nephrology in the Department of Medicine, effective October 1, 2018, for five years.
Le’s clinical interests are in hypertension and kidney disease, and her National Institutes of Health-funded research centers on the genetics and mechanisms of hypertension and chronic kidney disease. She is certified in nephrology by the American Board of Internal Medicine.
Le has been published in numerous journals, including Circulation, Journal of Immunology, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Nature Communications, and PLoS Genetics. Prior to joining the Medical Center in 2018, Le served on the faculties of the Duke University School of Medicine and the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
Le studied chemistry and philosophy at George Washington University and graduated from George Washington University Medical School. She completed her residency in internal medicine and fellowship in nephrology at Duke University Medical Center.
Paula M. Vertino, a professor of biomedical genetics, has been jointly appointed professor of oncology and the Wilmot Distinguished Professor in Cancer Genomics, effective September 1, 2018.
Vertino is an internationally recognized cancer research scientist focused on cancer epigenetics and novel mechanisms of gene silencing in cancer. Throughout her career, Vertino has had more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific publications, with her work appearing in journals such as Molecular Cell, Genome Research, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, among others. Her work has been funded by the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and NASA. Vertino is a former member of the editorial board of Cancer Research, and currently serves on the NCI-A panel that oversees the review of NCI-designated cancer centers nationwide.
Prior to joining the Medical Center in 2018, Vertino was on the faculty at Emory University where she served as a professor of radiation oncology, and led the Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics program at Winship Cancer Institute. She previously directed the Cancer Biology Graduate program and served as codirector for research for the Hematology and Medical Oncology Fellowship program.
Vertino pursued graduate work at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and received her doctorate from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She completed her postdoctoral training in cancer genetics at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University.
David N. Herrmann, a professor of neurology, has been jointly appointed the E. Philip and Carole Saunders Professor in Neuromuscular Research through October 31, 2023.
Herrmann is chief of the Medical Center’s Department of Neurology, Division of Neuromuscular Disorders and director of the Peripheral Neuropathy Clinics and Cutaneous Innervation Laboratory. Clinically, his interests are in the diagnosis and care of patients with various types of peripheral neuropathy. Herrmann established one of the first cutaneous innervation laboratories in the United States for the diagnosis of small fiber neuropathy.
Herrmann is the principal investigator in Rochester for the National Institutes of Health–sponsored Inherited Neuropathy Consortium Rare Disease Clinical Research Center, focusing on new gene identification for inherited neuropathies, development of novel neuropathy outcome measures and biomarkers, and experimental therapeutics. His work has been published in Brain, American Journal of Genetics, Neurology, Annals of Neurology, and JAMA Neurology, among other publications.
A graduate of the University of Witwatersrand Medical School in Johannesburg, South Africa, Herrmann did his neurology residency and fellowship training at the University of Michigan Medical Center. He is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in neurology, clinical neurophysiology, and neuromuscular medicine, and by the American Board of Electrodiagnostic Medicine.
