Maron Will Co-Direct Institute for Health Computing – UMB News

University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) Dean Mark T. Gladwin, MD, announced on May 1 that Bradley A. Maron, MD, associate professor of medicine at Brigham & Womens Hospital (BWH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) and co-director of the Pulmonary Vascular Disease Center at the VA Boston Healthcare System, has been appointed co-director of the new University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing (UM-IHC), director of scientific operations for the UM-IHC, as well as senior associate dean for precision medicine at UMSOM, effective May 1, 2023.

In his new role as co-director of the UM-IHC, Maron will work with University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), and University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) partners in establishing the new institute as an international leader in the interdependent fields of clinical analytics and computational biology, using advanced data science technologies. He also will lead efforts to build centers within the institute that focus on therapeutic target discovery, population health, pragmatic clinical trials, and an educational core curriculum that emphasizes scientific entrepreneurship.

Bradley A. Maron, MD

Launched in November 2022, UM-IHC seeks to leverage recent advances in network medicine, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning to create a premier learning health care system that evaluates both de-identified and secure digitized medical health data to improve outcomes for patients across the state of Maryland.

As senior associate dean for precision medicine, Maron will oversee initiatives that build UMSOMs capacity to pursue research that advances the schools leadership in precision medicine, a new area of medicine that uses information captured from a patients own biological and clinical profile to prevent, diagnose, or treat disease. These initiatives will include acquiring funds for operational advances, building new partnerships with key federal health agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Food and Drug Administration, identifying appropriate faculty recruits, and advocating for precision medicine approaches to clinical care. In collaboration with the senior associate dean for undergraduate medical education, Maron also will ensure that precision medicine is represented in the medical school curriculum and that UMSOM is preparing students to lead clinical and research initiatives in this emerging area.

Maron is a recognized physician-scientist in the rapidly growing fields of precision medicine, network medicine, and computational data analysis. Currently, he is engaged as the co-principal investigator in an ongoing study titled Network Medicine and Systems Pharmacology to Advance Precision Medicine in Combined Pulmonary Hypertension, and a second, as the principal investigator, titled, Personalized Protein-Protein Interactomes and Precision Medicine in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension. He is also the co-author of numerous papers published in flagship journals for the American Heart Association, American Thoracic Society, and Nature family discussing how multi-omics technologies can contribute to precision medicine

Dr. Maron is a highly effective and strategic leader who is ideally suited to move this new institute forward, said Gladwin, who also is vice president for medical affairs, UMB, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor, UMSOM. "His experience and entrepreneurial management skills are perfectly aligned with our new vision to utilize disruptive technology and embrace and harness the power of clinical analytics and precision medicine to enhance patient care and provide populations health services.

In 2021, Maron was inducted into the American Society of Clinical Investigation, one of the oldest and most prestigious medical societies in the United States. At BWH, he was vice-chair of the Cardiovascular Life Sciences Section in the Division of CV Medicine and medical director of the Cardiopulmonary Exercise Center. Additionally, he is the recipient of the Excellence in Tutoring Award, Eleanor and Miles Shore Scholar in Medicine fellowship, Chairs Research Award, and Distinguished Master Clinician Award and Master Clinician Award from BWH and HMS.

Maron is a widely published and NIH-funded investigator, with co-authorship on more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. His research focuses on understanding novel molecular mechanisms involved in the pathobiology of cardiovascular disease. He is currently the principal investigator on three major NIH Project Grants, totaling over $1.6 million per year in funding. The American Heart Association, National Scleroderma Foundation, Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute, and National Institutes of Health have supported his research.

In 2020, he led an international research program resulting in a publication in Lancet Respiratory Medicine titled The Association Between Pulmonary Vascular Resistance and Clinical Outcomes in Patients with Pulmonary Hypertension: A Retrospective Cohort Study. This work contributed to a change in the definition of the disease pulmonary hypertension. His seminal paper on NEDD9 Targets COL3A1 to Promote Endothelial Fibrosis and Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension that was published in Science Translational Medicine, a marque journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, established the foundation for a U.S. patent and implicated NEDD9 as an important mediator of pulmonary vascular fibrosis and thrombosis. He also is the lead editor of the seminal text, "Pulmonary Hypertension: Basic Science to Clinical Medicine" (Springer, 2016).

We are in a transformative period for health care in Maryland, in which building computational systems using individual patient-level information to tailor disease prevention and treatment strategies is a reality, Maron said. The key is building systems with the capacity to improve health, wellness, and longevity for all of the people of Maryland that is our mission. I am extremely excited and fortunate to work with the co-directors from the University of Maryland, College Park and University of Maryland Medical System in this endeavor.

Maron is a graduate of Williams College and received his MD from the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University before completing an internal medicine residency at Boston Medical Center. He then finished cardiovascular medicine research and clinical fellowship programs at BWHarvard. Maron is American Board of Internal Medicine-certified in cardiovascular medicine.

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Maron Will Co-Direct Institute for Health Computing - UMB News