January 24, 2003

Dear Colleagues:

With great pleasure we announce that on March 1, Julie Ann Freischlag, M.D., will become the William Stewart Halsted Professor and Director of the Department of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Surgeon-in-Chief of The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Dr. Freischlag has served since 1998 as Professor and Chief of the Section of Vascular Surgery and Director of the Gonda Vascular Center at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). A graduate of the University of Illinois and of Rush Medical College, she trained in both General Surgery and Vascular Surgery at UCLA, and is certified in both by the American Board of Surgery.

Dr. Freischlag has a superb academic record, publishing more than 100 original articles and 27 book chapters, primarily focused on surgical repair of the carotid artery and abdominal aortic aneurysms. Her research interests lie in the effects of smoking on arterial and venous endothelium, causes of atherosclerosis and intimal hyperplasia. She currently is looking at the reasons for failure in dialysis access sites and evaluating a new laser that can identify types of atherosclerosis in the carotid arteries. She has been a major participant in the Veterans Administration Cooperative Study Group, most recently focused on the early diagnosis and treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysms, and is presently the National Co-Principal Investigator of a related VA Cooperative Trial on endovascular treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysms.

A “triple threat” surgeon, Dr. Freischlag excels in teaching, as well as research and patient care. She received Outstanding Teaching Awards at every institution where she served as a faculty member: the University California at San Diego, UCLA and the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Her national leadership in academic societies includes serving as the representative to the American Board of Surgery for the Association for Academic Surgery, past President of the Association of Veterans Administration Surgeons, and member of the Executive Committee of the American College of Surgeons. She presently serves on the editorial boards of six major surgical journals and is guest editor of the Journal of Vascular Surgery and the Annals of Surgery. Her fund-raising successes in development of the Gonda Vascular Center at UCLA are impressive.

The Search Committee headed by George Dover and Murray Sachs recognized that the Director of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins must be a leader in the academic community locally, nationally and internationally. As the committee’s letter of recommendation noted, “Dr. Freischlag’s past accomplishments and vision for the future for General Surgery indicate that she will serve as an excellent role model and leader for the next generation of academic surgeons.”

We’re sure you will join us in welcoming Julie, her husband, Philip Roethle, and their young son to Baltimore. In succeeding such surgical greats as Halsted, Alfred Blalock, George Zuidema and John Cameron, she will be standing on the shoulders of giants. With your help and cooperation, she will continue that tradition. At the same time, our deep thanks go to John Cameron for the two decades he has held the most prestigious position in American surgery. We are delighted that he will continue to be a part of surgery at Johns Hopkins.

Sincerely,