May 17, 2005

Hirshfield to Head Up Medical Center Research

By Jamie L. Freedman

The George Washington University Medical Center recently appointed Anne Newman Hirshfield as associate vice president for research, following a nationwide search.

Hirshfield comes to GW from the University of Maryland, where she served for the past decade as assistant dean for research at the School of Medicine. She joined the University of Maryland in 1978 as assistant professor of anatomy, teaching gross anatomy and embryology and conducting research on female reproduction. Her extensive publication list includes more than a dozen books that she’s authored or co-authored and more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and abstracts.

Hirshfield moved from researcher to administrator in the late 1980s, when, as treasurer of the board of The Society for the Study of Reproduction, she spearheaded the organization’s efforts to address various management and financial issues.

A highlight of Hirshfield’s tenure at Maryland was bringing together a multidisciplinary team devoted to securing major facilities enhancement funding from the National Institutes of Health. The project resulted in $3.5 million to build the largest biosafety level 3 facility east of the Mississippi for the study of hazardous infectious agents and facilitated the building of a genomics center. She also received acclaim for developing an in-depth relational database for researchers and a more general Web-accessible compendium of research activities written in clear, non-technical language.

Hirshfield looks forward to making an even greater difference at GW, where she plans to concentrate her efforts on expanding the research mission of the Medical Center by increasing the number of funded investigators, the extent of interdisciplinary collaborations, and the resources available to investigators to do their work.

“I’m tremendously excited to be here,” she says. “This is a great institution with a proud history, and the Medical Center has assets already in place that will serve as a solid foundation for growing research: a splendid location, a new hospital, enthusiastic leaders who have made a strong commitment to research, some key core facilities, and a number of highly talented, dynamic investigators who are committed to enhancing the research environment. The potential is enormous.”

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