President Antonio Bianco and Secretary/COO Victor Bernet installed at the 15thInternational Thyroid Congress
The American Thyroid Association (ATA) announces that Dr. Antonio Bianco and Dr. Victor Bernet assumed their leadership roles at the 15th International Thyroid Congress held recently in Lake Buena Vista, FL. The Secretary/COO of the ATA, Victor J. Bernet, MD, Chair of the Division of Endocrinology at the Mayo Clinic (Jacksonville, FL), will serve a four-year term. New ATA President, Antonio Bianco, MD, PhD, the Charles A. Weaver Professor of Medicine, President of Rush University Medical Group in Chicago, took office to serve for the 2015-2016 governance year. In addition, the ATA elected John Morris, MD, Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic School of Medicine (Rochester, MN) and prior Chair of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, Metabolism, and Nutrition, as President-elect. Dr. Morris has served as ATA Secretary for the past 4 years. David H. Sarne, MD, Clinical Associate of Medicine at The University of Chicago School of Medicine (Illinois) will take over as Treasurer of the ATA, a position he has held previously, replacing Gregory Randolph, MD, who is the new President-Elect of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
Dr. Bernet has enjoyed a long relationship with the ATA beginning with the first meeting he attended as a Fellow in 1993. He has served the organization in multiple capacities including as a member of the Public Health Committee, the Internet and Communications Task Force, the Fellows Task Force, and recently on the ATA Board of Directors as Secretary-elect and Director. Dr. Bernet served 21 years in the U.S. Army Medical Corps retiring in 2010 at the rank of Colonel.
Dr. Bianco was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil where he obtained his MD and clinical training in Endocrinology and a PhD in Human Physiology from the University of Sao Paulo. Throughout his career, Dr. Bianco has maintained a federally funded laboratory dedicated to studies of thyroid hormone metabolism and action. A member of the ATA since 1987, he received the ATA’s Van Meter Lectureship Award in 2004, served as task force chair of the ATA Guide to Investigating Thyroid Hormone Economy and Action in Rodent and Cell Models published in 2013, and co-chaired the task force developing the Guidelines for the Treatment of Hypothyroidism, published in 2014.
Dr. John Morris is involved in clinical practice, education, and research, with a special emphasis on thyroid disease. He directs a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded research laboratory investigating the role of the sodium-iodide symporter as a novel therapeutic gene for cancer gene therapy. Among many leadership roles in the ATA, he has co-chaired the ATA Program Committee.
Dr. Sarne is an endocrinologist caring for patients with a broad range of thyroid disorders. He has been the primary investigator on long-term studies examining the effect of thyroid hormone on thyroid disorders and bone. He has also studied thyroid abnormalities and infertility, and the transport of thyroid hormone into cells. Dr. Sarne has served as long-time ATA Treasurer and as a member of the Executive Board, and as Chairman of the Finance and Audit Committee.
At its recent annual meeting the ATA also announced three new members of its Board of Directors, serving a four-year term 2015-2019: Andrew Bauer, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania and the Director of the Thyroid Center in the Division of Endocrinology and Diabetes at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Sally Carty, MD, Professor of Surgery and Chief of Endocrine Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh; and Rebecca Schweppe, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism & Diabetes, University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus.
Dr. Andrew Bauer recently served as a member of the ATA’s Pre-operative Staging Committee and the Thyroid Hormone Replacement Committee, and as a Co-Chair for the guidelines task force on pediatric thyroid nodules and differentiated thyroid cancer. Dr. Bauer’s clinical and research areas of interest focus on the study of pediatric thyroid disease, including hyperthyroidism, thyroid nodular disease, thyroid cancer, and inherited syndromes associated with an increased risk of developing thyroid nodules and thyroid cancer.
Dr. Sally Carty has served on the ATA’s Program Committee, Surgical Affairs Committee, and Publications Committee. She has helped write several consensus statements including the new ATA Statement on Surgical Applications of Molecular Profiling for Thyroid Nodules. Dr. Carty’s clinical research interests focus on primary hyperparathyroidism, thyroid molecular markers, and the multiple endocrine tumor syndromes. She is past president of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons.
Dr. Rebecca Schweppe is a member of the ATA Research Committee, the Editorial Board of Thyroid, and participated in the ATA Strategic Planning Retreat in 2015. The focus of Dr. Schweppe’s lab is to identify novel molecular targets relevant to advanced thyroid cancer with the ultimate goal of advancing these studies to clinical trials for advanced thyroid cancer patients. In 2008, Dr. Schweppe published a landmark study showing that the majority of thyroid cancer cell lines that had been widely used around the world for the past 20 years were misidentified with cell lines from other tumor types. Dr. Schweppe has successfully competed for K12 and ARRA Challenge grant funding through the NIH, and her research is currently funded by an NCI R01 and American Cancer Society Research Scholars Grant.
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The American Thyroid Association (ATA) is the leading worldwide organization dedicated to the advancement, understanding, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of thyroid disorders and thyroid cancer. ATA is an international membership medical society with over 1,700 members from 43 countries around the world. Celebrating its 92nd anniversary, the ATA delivers its mission — of being devoted to thyroid biology and to the prevention and treatment of thyroid disease through excellence in research, clinical care, education, and public health — through several key endeavors: the publication of highly regarded professional journals, Thyroid, Clinical Thyroidology, and VideoEndocrinology; annual scientific meetings; biennial clinical and research symposia; research grant programs for young investigators, support of online professional, public and patient educational programs; and the development of guidelines for clinical management of thyroid disease and thyroid cancer. The ATA promotes thyroid awareness and information through its online Clinical Thyroidology for the Public (distributed free of charge to over 11,000 patients and public subscribers) and extensive, authoritative explanations of thyroid disease and thyroid cancer in both English and Spanish. The ATA website serves as the clinical resource for patients and the public who look for reliable information on the Internet. Every fifth year, the American Thyroid Association joins with the Latin American Thyroid Society, the European Thyroid Association, and the Asia and Oceania Thyroid Association to co-sponsor the International Thyroid Congress (ITC). The American Thyroid Association hosted the 15thITC at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in October 2015.
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