April 2018 - We are pleased to announce that the William L. Young, MD, Endowed Chair in Anesthesia and Perioperative Care has been established. This chair will be held by the Department’s Vice Chair for research – a position currently held by Judith Hellman, MD, and will help support the kind of cutting-edge research that typified Dr. Young’s extraordinary career.
Dr. William L. Young was the 2009 recipient of the ASA’s Excellence in Research Award, and the founder and former director of the UCSF Center for Cerebrovascular Research. An innovative and productive investigator, Bill had continuous NIH funding from the period of 1990 to the time of his ASA award, with up to five concurrent grants from 1999 – 2009. He was the director of a program project grant, “Integrative Study of Brain Vascular Malformations,” and in 2008, co-chaired the first NINDS workshop on brain vascular malformations. As a testament to his remarkable career, Bill served as primary mentor on multiple NIH K awards, and was the recipient of an NIH K24 award (which “provide support…to act as research mentors primarily for clinical residents, clinical fellows and/or junior clinical faculty.”). Many of Bill’s mentees went on to become successful faculty at prestigious academic institutions (such as UCSF). Dr. Ronald Miller, former chair of UCSF Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, provided a summary of Bill’s career for the August 2009 ASA Newsletter (Volume 73, Number 8).
In addition to her role as Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, Dr. Hellman is alsoa physician-scientist with a clinical focus in critical care medicine and a research focus on sepsis and inflammatory critical illness. Dr. Hellman directs the UCSF Anesthesia Research training program and is a faculty member of the UCSF Biomedical Sciences and Immunology Graduate Programs.
Dr. Hellman completed full residencies in internal medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University and anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), followed by a clinical fellowship in critical care medicine at MGH. Subsequently she did a post-doctoral research fellowship in the Infectious Disease Unit at MGH before joining the faculty at Harvard Medical School/MGH in 1997. Dr. Hellman joined UCSF in 2008. Over the last two decades, she has worked in the adult surgical and medical intensive care units at MGH and UCSF and has been actively engaged in basic and translational research.
Dr. Hellman studies the pathophysiology of sepsis and inflammatory critical illness. Her specific areas of focus include innate immune signaling, leukocyte and endothelial inflammatory pathways, and immunomodulation in sepsis and inflammation-driven organ injury. She has extensively studied Toll-like receptors (TLRs), which recognize microbial and host factors and initiate inflammation during infection and injury, and has defined novel mediators of TLR-dependent signaling in endothelial cells and leukocytes. Over the last several years, her group also has actively investigated the immunomodulatory role of the endocannabinoid and endovanilloid systems in cellular and systemic inflammation.
Per Dr. Hellman -
"In addition to being a prolific researcher in his own right, Dr. Bill Young dedicated his career to developing clinical scientists in anesthesiology. He developed and implemented our department's innovative Research Scholars Track of the Anesthesia Residency and Pathway of Scientific Independence, both of which are still going strong. I intend to use the William L Young M.D. Endowed Professorship funds to continue to support the research training and career development of anesthesiologists in our department."