ATA News Release 2007

Paul Walfish Receives American Thyroid Association’s 2007 Sidney H. Ingbar Distinguished Lectureship Award

October 5, 2007 — Paul G. Walfish, M.D., of Toronto, Canada, is the recipient of the American Thyroid Association’s (ATA) 2007 Sidney H. Ingbar Distinguished Lectureship Award. Dr. Walfish presented his lecture, “Thyroid Hormone Action: A Second Career Odyssey” today at the ATA’s 78th Annual Meeting in New York City, where he also received the award.

The Ingbar award recognizes outstanding academic achievements in thyroidology, in keeping with the innovation and vision that epitomized Dr. Ingbar’s brilliant investigative career. The Ingbar award is conferred upon an established investigator who has made major contributions to thyroid-related research over many years. The award is endowed by donations made in memory of Dr. Ingbar and is supported, in part, by an unrestricted educational grant from Abbott Laboratories.

Dr. Walfish is professor emeritus in the Department of Medicine, Pediatrics and Otolaryngology at the University of Toronto and a senior consultant in the Division of Endocrinology & Metabolism and the Head & Neck Oncology Program of Mount Sinai Hospital.

Dr. Walfish has made numerous contributions to improve the clinical management of many thyroid disorders, including the early detection and treatment of congenital hypothyroidism by newborn screening, the application of ultrasound and fine-needle biopsy in the detection and management of thyroid cancer, and the recognition of the post-partum thyroiditis syndrome and its underlying autoimmune etiology. He continues to be actively engaged in basic science research programs at Mount Sinai Hospital where his work focuses on using yeast and human cell systems to understand the molecular basis of thyroid hormone action and cancer.

Dr. Walfish received his medical degree from the University of Toronto School of Medicine, where he also underwent training in Endocrinology and Internal Medicine, to obtain a Fellowship from the Royal College of Physicians of Canada. After an R.S. McLaughlin Traveling Fellowship at the Thyroid and Endocrine Units of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard School of Medicine, he returned to Toronto in 1964 as a scholar of the Medical Research Council of Canada and has been, to date, a full-time physician and scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital and the University of Toronto.

Dr. Walfish’s work has been published in many journals. His accomplishments have been publicly recognized for more than two decades, with many awards, appointments and honors, including receiving the ATA’s 2004 Paul Starr Award for outstanding contributions in clinical thyroidology. Dr. Walfish has been an active ATA member since 1972 and was a member of the editorial board of Thyroid.

For more information, please contact ATA Communications Consultant Jennifer Reising at jreising@reisingcommunications.com or (703) 300-9248.