 MA 1976 MD graduate from Washington University in St Louis, Dr. Fink obtained his surgical training at the National Naval Hospital in Bethesda, MD, later moved to the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA, where he rapidly escalated to full professor of surgery. In 1995, he moved to Harvard Medical School in Boston and was appointed Johnson and Johnson Professor of Surgery and Surgeon-in Chief at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Finally, in 1999 he was recruited to the University of Pittsburgh as Chief of the Critical Care Medicine Division, appointed Watson Professor of Surgery in 2000, and the following year he became the Founding Chairman of the new Department of CCM at Pitt, still the one and only such academic department in the country.
During his fabulous academic career, Dr. Fink authored or coauthored approximately 450 publications of which half are peer review articles, mostly on his favorite topics of sepsis and cell function. Dr. Fink was co-editor of two editions of the famous Intensive Care Medicine textbook. After moving to Pittsburgh, he was invited to serve as chief editor of the fifth edition of the Textbook of Critical Care that was published in 2005. Dr. Fink continued his clinical activities throughout his years in Pittsburgh and maintained his ABS certification in Surgical Critical Care. He was a member of numerous professional and scientific societies. He served as president of the Shock Society in 1997 and president of the surgical section of SCCM, and he received the Distinguished Investigator Award by the American College of CCM in 2008. Dr. Fink held prominent positions in the Society of University Surgeons, American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, and the American College of Chest Physicians, to mention but a few. He received a dozen different awards including the Alpha Omega Alpha.
Dr. Fink served as a visiting professor at over 50 of our most famous universities. He has received some 30 major federal research grants as PI or Co-PI. His innovative and most successful research has led to a large number of patents issued in different countries and currently over 50 pending patents. Not surprising, Dr. Fink spent most of academic year 2006-2007 on an entrepreneurial leave to establish a new pharmaceutical company, named Logical Therapeutics, Inc. of which he is now the founding CEO. Dr. Fink resigned as Pitt CCM Chairman on July 1, 2007 but remains on the Pitt Faculty.
In conclusion, we owe Dr. Fink our greatest admiration and gratitude for having brought CCM in Pittsburgh to become the first university department of its kind in the nation. Dr. Fink created a most reputable scientific research environment with 18 full professors and federal grants of more than $ 15 M per year as indicated by the following illustration. We thank Dr. Fink for his fantastic contributions to CCM locally, nationally and worldwide, congratulate him for this accomplishment, and wish him continued success in scientific business.
CCM Department Research Activity 2001-05 (pdf) |
