PHILADELPHIA — Harold I. Feldman, MD, MSCE, has been named chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology (DBE) and Director of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (CCEB) at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
A professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, he has been serving as interim chair of the DBE, as well as interim director of the CCEB since 2012. In addition, Dr. Feldman holds a secondary appointment as professor of Medicine in Pediatrics.
“We are fortunate to have Dr. Feldman, an internationally renowned epidemiological researcher, a skilled educator, and a highly experienced administrator,” said J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, Dean of the Perelman School of the Medicine and Executive Vice President for the Health System. “With this combination of talents, he will no doubt lead Penn Medicine’s Biostatistics and Epidemiology Programs to their next level of accomplishment.”
Among his numerous national leadership roles, Dr. Feldman leads NIH’s Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort Study (CRIC), the major national research effort making fundamental insights into the epidemiology, management, and outcomes of chronic kidney disease. Under his leadership, the CRIC Study has discovered numerous findings with great promise to advance the development of novel therapies to reduce morbidity in this population worldwide. More recently, it was announced that Penn, thanks to the expansion of a National Institutes of Health grant, will continue to act as the Scientific and Data Coordinating Center for the CRIC study under Dr. Feldman’s leadership for five more years.
Dr. Feldman earned both his bachelor’s degree and his medical degree at Boston University. He then completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles before coming to the University of Pennsylvania in 1985 as an Andrew W. Mellon fellow in Clinical Epidemiology and a fellow in the Renal Electrolyte Section when he received his masters training in clinical epidemiology.
Dr. Feldman has also held numerous institutional leadership roles including Medical Director of HUP’s Dialysis Unit, where he continues to be an attending physician. He served as director of the CCEB’s Clinical Epidemiology Unit from 2000 to 2012 and as director of the Division of Epidemiology from 2001 to 2012. Under his leadership of Penn’s epidemiology program, the division approximately doubled in size and now houses international leaders in a broad array of clinical and methodological content areas of Clinical Epidemiology. As well, Dr. Feldman was co-director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at Penn, instrumental in returning this uniquely prominent training program to Penn in 2003.
Dr. Feldman has received numerous awards for his work as an investigator and educator. Included among these have been his selection as an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association, receipt of Penn’s Samuel Martin Award in Health Evaluative Sciences and its Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for distinguished teaching, as well as election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Epidemiological Society.
Dr. Feldman’s published scholarship has appeared in most of the leading journals for clinical research. He has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed research publications from the research program he has led for over 25 years, supported by more than $50 million in extramural funding.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
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