BOSTON – Elliot L. Chaikof, MD, PhD, Surgeon-in-Chief and Chair of the Roberta and Stephen R. Weiner Department of Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Johnson and Johnson Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies.
Election to the IOM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service. Unique in its structure as both an honorific membership organization and an advisory organization, the IOM was established in 1970 and is one of four distinguished organizations that make up the National Academies, which provide scientific and technological advice to the nation.
Chaikof joins BIDMC IOM members Jeffrey S. Flier, MD, Jerome E. Groopman, MD, Sharon K. Inouye, MD, MPH, Barbara B. Kahn, MD, Mitchell T. Rabkin, MD, and Clifford B. Saper, MD, PhD. Former BIDMC Chiefs of Surgery William Silen, MD, and Glenn D. Steele, Jr, MD, PhD, are also members of the IOM.
As a surgeon and biomedical engineer, Chaikof is internationally recognized for his many original and innovative contributions to vascular surgery. His work has been pivotal in the development of new practice guidelines for the evaluation and treatment of patients with aortic aneurysms and the development of minimally invasive endovascular therapies for carotid disease and peripheral arterial disease. In the areas of biomedical engineering and materials science, Chaikof's work has led to the development of an advanced generation of cardiovascular materials, devices, and cell- and drug-based therapies based on the principles of biomimetics and molecular and tissue engineering, as well as micro- and nanofabrication technologies.
"Elliot Chaikof is not only a gifted surgeon and prodigious scientist, he is a visionary thought leader," said BIDMC President and CEO Kevin Tabb, MD. "His creation of interdisciplinary alliances among clinicians, engineers, chemists and biologists has led to creative and innovative problem-solving, including the creation of clinically beneficial, cost-effective therapies for vascular diseases, as well as important and far-reaching advances in the emerging field of regenerative medicine."
Chaikof joined the faculty of BIDMC and Harvard Medical School in 2010. As Surgeon-in-Chief, he oversees more than 300 faculty and staff, nearly 100 surgical residents and clinical fellows in eight training programs, and a research enterprise that last year was supported by $16 million in funding and produced some 600 scholarly articles, as well as many textbooks in the disciplines of both surgery and the biomedical sciences.
Chaikof is the 2013 recipient of the Clemson Award for Applied Research from the Society for Biomaterials, a principal faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and an associate member of Harvard's Wyss Institute of Biological Inspired Engineering. Some two dozen patents have been issued or filed based on work in his laboratory.
After earning BA and MD degrees from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Chaikof completed a residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and, while a surgical resident, received a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a focus on artificial organs and the design of biomaterials for reconstructive surgery.
Chaikof went on to complete additional training in Vascular Surgery at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, where he later joined the surgical faculty. He held the John E. Skandalakis Chair of Surgery at Emory University, and also served as Chief of Vascular Surgery and Director of the Residency in Vascular Surgery. While at Emory University, Chaikof held secondary appointments in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The author of over 270 publications in major surgical and medical journals, as well as in leading journals in the fields of engineering and chemistry, he is also the co-editor of the Atlas of Vascular Surgery and Endovascular Therapy: Anatomy and Technique, published in 2014 by Elsevier.
He is an elected member of the American Surgical Association, the College of Fellows of the Society of Vascular Surgery, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and is a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biomedical Engineering.
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Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and currently ranks third in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide.
BIDMC is in the community with Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Milton, Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham, Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth, Anna Jaques Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Lawrence General Hospital, Signature Healthcare, Beth Israel Deaconess HealthCare, Community Care Alliance, and Atrius Health. BIDMC is also clinically affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and Hebrew Senior Life and is a research partner of Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit http://www.bidmc.org.