• 2008 Basic Science Award: Jonathan D. Brodie, M.D.'75, Ph.D.
• 2008 Clinical Science Award: Jay L. Grosfeld, M.D. '61
• 2008 Health Science Award: Lawrence G. Smith, M.D. '76
• Past Honorees

Dr. Jonathan D. Brodie is a distinguished scientist and member of our Department of Psychiatry. Jon received a Ph.D. in Physiological Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin and after postdoctoral training in La Jolla he joined the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry at the State University of New York at Buffalo. After rising to the position of tenured Associate Professor, he decided to attend medical school and entered the NYU School of Medicine and received his M.D. degree in 1975. After a Residency in Psychiatry at NYU, he joined the NYU Department of Psychiatry as an Assistant Professor in 1978. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1982 and to Professor in 1987. In 2000 he became the Marvin Stern Professor of Psychiatry. Marvin Stern was one of our most distinguished members of the Department of Psychiatry. Jon served as Interim Chair of the Department of Psychiatry from 2005-2006 and is now Vice Chair of the Department.

Jon has pioneered the application of neuroimaging techniques, in particular positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) to the study of the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. In the course of these studies, he and his colleagues noted that antipsychotic drug binding in schizophrenic patients who failed to respond clinically to treatment was indistinguishable from the antipsychotic binding in the brains of patients who did respond to treatment. This led him to ask the question: “How can we measure if a drug is active without having to wait for a clinical response?” To answer the question, he devised a strategy of measuring pharmacological activity in the living brain using PET technology by measuring downstream changes resulting from the interaction of neurotransmitter systems.

One of those experiments led to the development of a new pharmacotherapeutic strategy for the treatment of drug abuse, which targets an enzyme that modulates the response that seems to be common to all drugs of abuse. For studies that range from characterizing a new pathway for cholesterol biosynthesis, determining the kinetic mechanisms regulating the interaction of folic acid and Vitamin B12 to in vivo imaging of human neurochemistry, he has received national and international recognition for his research and has been elected as a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

In recognition of his outstanding research as well as his academic contributions to the NYU School of Medicine and to the field of fundamental research in the area of Psychiatry it is with great pleasure that we present Jonathan D. Brodie with the Solomon A. Berson Award in Basic Science.

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Dr. Jay L. Grosfeld, a native New Yorker, received his B.A. from Washington Square College of NYU, and his medical degree from NYU School of Medicine in 1961, where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha. Following general surgery residency at NYU/Bellevue under Frank Spencer, he served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, then underwent training in Pediatric Surgery at the Columbus Children’s Hospital of Ohio State University under H. William Clatworthy, Jr. After a brief stint back on the NYU faculty, in 1972 Jay was appointed the first Professor and Director of Pediatric Surgery at Indiana University and the first Surgeon-in-Chief of the Riley Children’s Hospital, pioneering the development of pediatric surgery in Indiana. In 1985 he was appointed Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Indiana University School of Medicine, the first pediatric surgeon in the US to become a Surgery Department Chairman.

Dr. Grosfeld has published more than 480 scientific articles, 125 chapters and eight textbooks. He is best known as a pioneer in neonatal surgery, pediatric surgical oncology (pioneering multidisciplinary approaches to neuroblastoma and rhabdomyosarcoma), and surgical education. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, Seminars in Pediatric Surgery, and the renowned textbook Pediatric Surgery.

Jay has served as Chairman of the Surgical Section of the American Academy of Pediatrics, President of the American Pediatric Surgical Association, President of the Halsted Society, Chairman of the American Board of Surgery, Vice-Chairman of the ACGME-Residency Review Committee for Surgery, President of the Central Surgical Association, President of the Western Surgical Association, President of the World Federation of Associations of Pediatric Surgeons, Governor of the American College of Surgeons, and Council Member of the British Association of Pediatric Surgeons. He has served as President of the American Surgical Association, and is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors of the APSA Foundation and the World Federation of Associations of Pediatric Surgeons Foundation.

Among his many honors, Dr. Grosfeld received the Denis Browne Gold Medal from the British Association of Pediatric Surgeons, was named Pediatric Surgeon of the year at the University of Graz, Austria; earned the William E. Ladd Medal by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the “Sagamore of the Wabash Award” for his outstanding service to the State of Indiana. He has been elected an honorary member of 13 overseas surgical societies including the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, and the British, European, Japanese, Israeli, Hungarian, Colombian, Canadian, South African and Brazilian Societies of Pediatric Surgeons. He is happily married to Margie, his devoted wife of 46 years, and they have five children and 17 grandchildren.

Jay has been recognized as a superb and sensitive clinician, master surgeon, outstanding teacher, talented administrator, innovative scientific investigator, surgical leader and a staunch advocate for children. In recognition of his innumerable accomplishments, it is with great pleasure that we present Jay L. Grosfeld with the Solomon A. Berson Award in Clinical Science.

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Dr. Lawrence G. Smith is a national leader in improving medical education and linking educational innovation to improved medical care. Starting with a strong undergraduate background in the physical sciences, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum laude from Fordham, and including postgraduate research in biophysics at Michigan State, he turned his attention to medicine and entered NYU School of Medicine. He was elected to AOA and at graduation in 1976 received the AOA award as the top graduating student. He trained in Internal Medicine at the University of Rochester Strong Memorial Hospital, winning the Lawrence E. Young Award as the top graduating resident.

After military service Dr. Smith joined a premier multispecialty group practice in Huntington, Long Island, where he rapidly acquired a reputation as a master clinician. His outstanding voluntary educational contributions to the residency program at Stony Brook earned him great teacher awards on six separate occasions and led to his joining the full time faculty at Stony Brook in 1988 as Program Director of the Internal Medicine Residency. His distinguished record of achievement at Stony Brook led to his 1994 appointments at Mount Sinai School of Medicine as Horace W. Goldberg Professor of Medicine, Vice Chair for Education, and Head of the Division of Medical Education. His creative reorganization of the residency, focusing on the primary care model and residents having their own practices, greatly strengthened the program and gained national recognition, with Larry earning many honors and awards and rising to leadership positions in the American College of Physicians, the Association of Program Directors (serving as President), and the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Smith has also served in advisory positions and policy committees of the National Board of Medical Examiners and the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education. From 2001-2005 he served as Dean of Medical Education at Mount Sinai and Chair of the Department of Medical Education, leading a major transformation of the curriculum. Thereafter he joined the North Shore-LIJ Health System, first as Chief Academic Officer and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs, then as Chief Medical Officer, and most recently as the founding Dean of the new medical school under development as a joint venture of Hofstra University and the North Shore-LIJ Health System.

Despite all of these responsibilities, Dr. Smith has remained the “internist’s internist”, continuing to be recognized on lists of best doctors both locally and nationally. Larry has written extensively on innovation in medical education, medical professionalism, teaching evidence-based medicine, and creating constructive relationships between generalists and specialists. Respected, admired, and beloved by his students and trainees, and with the ideal blend of sympathetic understanding and uncompromisingly high standards of professional behavior and performance, he has been an iconic role model for a generation of young physicians who proudly boast that they were trained by him. It is therefore with great pleasure that we present Lawrence G. Smith with the Solomon A. Berson Award in Health Science.

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