Phil Cole Stepping Down as Director of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences

To the school of medicine faculty and staff

Dear Colleagues,

With great appreciation, we want to note that after 18 years as the director of the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences, Dr. Phil Cole is stepping down from that role in order to focus on his research.
 
Phil received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, after which he pursued postdoctoral training at Harvard and a faculty position at Rockefeller University. In 1999, Phil was recruited back to Johns Hopkins, as the E.K. Marshall and Thomas H. Maren Professor and director of the department, a position he has held since.

Phil’s distinct background as a physician and gifted chemical biologist enabled him to translate between basic sciences and clinical science, and significantly enhanced the department and school of medicine. His own laboratory has played a leading role in the development of novel inhibitors of enzymes that regulate gene expression, fundamental to the molecular pathology of cancer, metabolic disease and neurodegeneration. Throughout his tenure, Phil has recruited outstanding faculty and overseen a highly regarded training program. He has made significant contributions across the school and university, including in the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center Chemical Therapeutics Program, in helping to secure and sustain an institutional research center on the consequences of second-hand smoke from the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute, and in leading the cancer component of the school of medicine’s “Genes to Society” Translational Science Intersessions for third-year medical students.

Phil has been recognized in numerous ways during his time as director, including election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been an invited lecturer at numerous places nationally and internationally, and in 2006 was named Maryland’s Innovator of the Year. 

We wish also to express appreciation to James Stivers, Ph.D., who has agreed to serve as interim director. Jim is professor of pharmacology, and his laboratory has focused on mechanisms by which DNA damage in the cell is recognized and repaired, in the context of innate and adaptive immunity, cancer biology and HIV.

Please join us in thanking Phil for his many years of contributions to Johns Hopkins. 

Sincerely,

Paul B. Rothman, M.D.
Dean of the Medical Faculty
CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Landon S. King, M.D.
Executive Vice Dean
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine