Jonathan M. Samet, MD, MS
Gerard M. Turino, MD
ATS luminaries Gerard “Gerry” M. Turino, MD, and Jonathan M. Samet, MD, MS, will join ATS leadership on stage for a special conversation about the Society and the larger respiratory community, past and present, during the ATS Plenary Session at 11:30 a.m. today in the Grand Ballroom (above Grand Hall) in the convention center. ATS President Monica Kraft, MD, and President Elect Patricia W. Finn, MD, have prepared questions for what should be a lively and collegial discussion.
Over the span of his 63-year career, Dr. Turino has earned the reputation of being a legend in the pulmonary and internal medicine world and a legend in COPD and Alpha-1 support. He continues his research and clinical work at the James P. Mara Center for Lung Disease in St. Luke’s and Roosevelt Hospitals Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine in New York City. At ATS 2013, Dr. Turino was recognized as the ATS 2013 Breathing for Life Award winner, one of many awards he has received including two of the Society’s most coveted, the Edward Livingston Trudeau Medal in 2003 and the James Burns Amberson Lecture in 1985, in which he presented “The Lung Parenchyma: A Dynamic Matrix.” He served as ATS president in 1987-88.
“The accomplishment I’m most proud of during my tenure as ATS president is the founding of the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology,” Dr. Turino said. “The ATS needed a forum for research in pulmonary science. More and more basic research was being presented at the conference. And more and more researchers were becoming members, including PhDs. They had to have a forum.”
This year’s Trudeau Medalist, Dr. Samet, serves as professor and Flora L. Thornton chair in the department of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and director of the USC Institute for Global Health.
Dr. Samet, an international authority on the effects of smoking and air pollution on health, also chairs the Environmental Protection Agency Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and the Food and Drug Administration Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, and he has contributed to several U.S. Surgeon General’s reports. He holds two Surgeon General’s medallions among many awards, and he’s a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Early on, I was highly focused on respiratory epidemiology,” Dr. Samet said. “The ATS International Conference was an exciting place to be a young investigator. The Society was my first professional home, and it still is.”
In addition to the conversation, the Plenary Session (formerly the ATS Membership Meeting) will also feature the passing of the gavel and swearing in of new officers, and presidential commendations.