Cincinnati--William J. Martin II, MD, has been named dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Christian R. Holmes Professor, and Acting Senior Vice President commencing July 1, 2002. Dr. Martin is the 46th dean since the college's inception by frontier physician Daniel Drake in 1819. Dr. Martin will also serve for one year as acting senior vice president for the university during the academic year 2002-03. He was selected after a nationwide search.

"I am very excited by this opportunity," Dr. Martin said. "The College of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati has made great advances over the past decade under the leadership of Dean John Hutton and Senior Vice President and Provost Donald Harrison. UC Medical Center has the potential to become one of the top 20 medical centers in the nation in the next decade. I look forward to the challenge of that goal."

Dr. Martin is currently the Floyd and Reba Smith Professor of Respiratory Disease, and executive associate dean of clinical affairs at the Indiana University School of Medicine, where he has been for the past 14 years. Dr. Martin was the director of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care and Occupational Medicine at Indiana from 1988 to 2000.

"Dr. Martin brings a world of academic experience to the University of Cincinnati and having spent many hours discussing the future directions of the College of Medicine and the Medical Center with him, I am confident his leadership will raise our College of Medicine to new national and local prominence," Dr. Harrison said. "I truly look forward to working with him in this transition."

Joseph Steger, PhD, president of the University of Cincinnati, echoed Dr. Harrison's sentiments and added, "Dr. Martin is a superlative leader and will work to raise the quality of medical care and research at the university and in this community. He is eminently suited for this role based on his experience at Indiana."

Dr. Martin is also the current president and CEO of the Indiana University Medical Group. IUMG is the clinical practice of the IU School of Medicine's faculty physicians and is comprised of more than 700 physicians in a wide-range of specialties.

He received his medical degree from the University of Minnesota and completed an internal medicine residency and pulmonary fellowship at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in Rochester, Minn. He was faculty and medical staff at the Mayo Clinic from 1981 to 1988, before he was recruited to Indiana.

He did his research training at the National Institutes of Health, and he has been a funded principal investigator from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for the past 20 years. His clinical interests include interstitial lung disease, drug-induced lung disease and asthma. In 1995-1996, Dr. Martin was a Health Policy Fellow in the U.S. Senate for the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee.

He is a respected clinician, investigator and administrator who has served on many national committees and is a member of numerous prestigious professional societies. He was president of the American Thoracic Society in 2000-2001. His respiratory medicine program has been one of the outstanding ones in the country and has helped to develop the careers of faculty members for other universities. He is a past president of the American Lung Association of Indiana, as well as a past president of the Association of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Program Directors.

His wife Joyce is an attorney and is chief counsel for the Governor of Indiana. They have two children. Dr. Martin replaces Dr. Hutton who was appointed dean in 1987 and is retiring after 15 years of service. He will return to the UC faculty as professor of pediatrics and internal medicine.