Dean's Message - December 16, 2024

Dear GSBS Community,

The end of the year is here, and this is the usual time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the new year. I had the pleasure of presenting the year in review for GSBS at the recent TUSM town hall. I was pleased to report on our many accomplishments and to show pictures of our various events and celebrations. I was also pleased to report the growth in the number of GSBS faculty, the large increase in applications to GSBS, the launch of the new Master’s in Biomedical Research program, the number of student awards, student external fellowships and student publications. It was a wonderful opportunity to reaffirm the tremendous impact that all of you have on the educational and scholarly productivity of the University.

I also took the opportunity to say a special thank you and farewell to our esteemed and accomplished Dean emeritus Naomi Rosenberg, who will retire in January 2025. For those of you who did not attend town hall, I recalled Naomi’s long and productive association with Tufts, starting in 1977. Naomi was one of the founding members of the GSBS, since its inception in 1980. Her laboratory focused on understanding leukemia development and helped to produce the first good model for studying leukemia development in tissue culture and later a murine model for human chronic myelogenous leukemia. During her career she mentored 29 students to the completion of their PhD training and influenced the careers of many other students through her fostering of training grants at GSBS, including the Medical Scientist Training Program grant that supports the MD-PhD program. She served as Director of the Genetics Program, then became Dean in 2004 and subsequently assumed the additional role of Vice Dean for Research for TUSM in 2007. She retired as GSBS Dean in 2017 but has continued to be a tremendous supporter of GSBS. She and her husband Mort Rosenberg generously created the Rosenberg Fellowship, which supports GSBS students each year by providing stipend support and helping to defray education costs. She has supported GSBS so much over these last few years, in many ways great and small, by being a sounding board, an advisor, a social media master, a historian, an archivist, a chronicler of alumni outcomes, a photographer and a continuing source of inspiration and encouragement. Her ethos of doing whatever is needed to support GSBS is a standard that all of us will continue to aspire towards. We in GSBS will most certainly miss her but wish her only the best as she continues her incredible journey.

Thanks to all of you, the GSBS has become quite a desirable destination for PhD training, as shown by the record number of applications to GSBS PhD graduate programs this year. I challenge all of us to try to excel and exceed all our metrics for the coming year, but also charge everyone to maintain personal wellness and foster resilience. I wish you all happy holidays as we continue our efforts towards innovation in science and education in the new year and beyond.

Michael Chin, MD, PhD, Dean