Kumar named Vice Dean of BSD, Pritzker School

Vinay Kumar, the Alice Hogge and Arthur A. Baer Professor and Chairman of Pathology, has been appointed to serve as Vice Dean of the Biological Sciences Division and the Pritzker School of Medicine. Kumar’s appointment became effective July 1.

Kumar will assist with strategic program planning, the implementation of research taskforce recommendations and guiding the University Hospital’s response to the current decrease in funding from the National Institutes of Health. Kumar will continue his former appointments in Pathology, including his chairmanship of Pathology.

Kumar came to Chicago in 2000 as Professor and Chair of Pathology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, where he had been the Vernie A. Stembridge distinguished professor of pathology and associate dean for medical education.

In addition to leading Chicago’s Department of Pathology, Kumar has continued an internationally recognized research program that studies the molecular nature of surface receptors that regulate natural killer cell function, as well as the mechanisms involved in the differentiation of natural killer cells from hematopoietic stem cells.

Kumar is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists in London and a recipient of the Cancer Research Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society.

Along with the late Drs. Stanley Robbins and Ramzi Cotran, Kumar co-authored the Pathologic Basis of Disease and Basic Pathology, and he currently serves as senior editor of both texts. Now in their seventh edition, these texts have been translated into more than 13 languages.

Kumar has been active in several service roles, including membership in the Immunobiology Study Section of the National Institutes of Health, the editorial board of the Journal of Immunology, the test writing committee of the National Board of Medical Examiners, and the American Society of Investigative Pathology, for which he served as President in 1998.

In 2001, he was elected to the Council of Association of Pathology Chairmen, currently serving as Chairman of its Research and Education Group.