Kelly Metcalf Pate, an assistant professor of veterinary drugs at Johns Hopkins University College of Medicine, will come to be the new director of MIT’s Division of Comparative Medication (DCM) on March 1. Metcalf Pate will swap James Fox, who has been the director of DCM for more than 4 decades.
At Johns Hopkins, Metcalf Pate served as the affiliate director of educational schooling for the analysis coaching applications for veterinarians in the Office of Molecular and Comparative Pathology. She also released and directed the Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars Plan, a summer time investigation plan for veterinary pupils. In her study lab, she scientific studies how platelet cells interact with other immune cells through viral infections these types of as HIV and cytomegalovirus.
“My core passions lie in teaching and research,” states Metcalf Pate, who will also sign up for the college of the Division of Biological Engineering. “I am on the lookout ahead to continuing to function with veterinarian trainees and veterinary college students, and in continuing to do analysis that not only solutions the unidentified inquiries in platelet immunology but also assists us to figure out better techniques to operate with animal versions.”
The DCM contains more than 175 researchers, animal treatment and veterinary experts, veterinarians, and administrative team, who oversee animal care at MIT. Its mission involves keeping the overall health of the animals as nicely as carrying out biomedical study and instruction students in study and veterinary drugs.
“I am thrilled to welcome Kelly as our new DCM director. She delivers a powerful study software, enviable managerial capabilities, a collaborative mother nature, and a whole lot of ideas for how DCM can supply even much more value to our scientists,” states Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for study.
Metcalf Pate claims she was drawn to MIT by the collaborative spirit that she observed between the DCM staff. “It was very inspiring to see how determined by the study and scientific method every person was, and how a lot all people evidently labored alongside one another as a workforce,” she says.
Initially established in 1975 as the Division of Laboratory Animal Medication, the division was renamed in 1980 to reflect escalating involvement in study and teaching. Fox has directed the division considering the fact that its inception, and less than his management, the DCM has tremendously expanded MIT’s clinical investigation plan and extra new on-campus services for animal care and exploration.
“It has been a privilege and a under no circumstances-ending established of chances to operate with a great number of school, staff members, and learners about the several years, with the popular intention of conducting audio science, becoming ever mindful of the care and welfare of animals being applied in fulfilling that mentioned mission, and fostering that significant mandate for the college students going through an MIT schooling,” Fox suggests.
Metcalf Pate, who will be the Dorothy W. Poitras Associate Professor of Organic Engineering at MIT, states she programs to preserve and build on the composition that Fox has founded about the earlier 45 a long time.
“I am honored to be inheriting these types of an wonderful legacy and team in DCM. Dr. Fox has designed anything at MIT that is unequalled in giving great treatment for the animals though doing the job collaboratively with the study groups. It also advantages from powerful aid from the leadership and the MIT local community, for which I am thankful. I hope to maintain and develop upon this in the course of my individual time as director,” she claims.
She pointed out that scientists in DCM already have intensive collaborations in position with other departments all-around MIT, and she hopes to additional increase these collaborations, as properly as rising DCM’s investigation and instruction partnerships with other establishments in the Boston area.
A single of her longer-phrase goals is to explore the possibility of setting up a center to target on “refinement research” — the practice of hunting at how animal types are utilised to test to increase both the high quality of details and the welfare of the animals.
Joining the MIT neighborhood is some thing of a homecoming for Metcalf Pate, who grew up in Massachusetts and gained her bachelor’s degree from Boston University in 2003. She also retains a PhD from Johns Hopkins University College of Medication and a DVM from Purdue College Higher education of Veterinary Drugs.
“I am delighted that Kelly Pate will be assuming the place of director of DCM, with a tenured faculty appointment in BE,” Fox claims. “Kelly embodies the custom of veterinarians from Johns Hopkins, in becoming fully commited to conducting to start with-price peer reviewed research, an enthusiastic mentor and teacher, and satisfying the essential responsibility of directing an indispensable, centralized campus-vast animal source system. She will certainly foster, enrich, and continue on the tradition of excellence that has turn out to be the trademark of DCM.”