Rose, Former UB Professor And Head of Witebsky Center, to Receive Medical School's Distinguished Alumnus Award

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Noel Richard Rose, Ph.D., M.D., professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at The Johns Hopkins University, will receive the Distinguished Medical Alumnus Award from the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at a dinner at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, in the Park Country Club of Buffalo.

Rose, a specialist and pioneer in the field of autoimmunity, is a 1964 graduate of the UB medical school. A graduate of Yale University, he received a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951.

He founded Wayne State University's Department of Immunology and Microbiology in 1973 and in 1982 became the first chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, now the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, at Johns Hopkins.

Rose began his academic career at UB, joining the faculty as an instructor in bacteriology and immunology in 1951. At UB, he worked with Ernest Witebsky, distinguished scientist, researcher and director of UB's Center of Immunology. Rose became director of the center, which now bears Witebsky's name, after his mentor's death in 1969, and holds honorary life-long membership on the Ernest Witebsky Center Committee.

During his 22 years at UB, he also was director of Erie County Laboratories, head of the old E.J. Meyer Memorial Hospital Department of Laboratories, and director of UB's diagnostic laboratories.

Rose left UB in 1973 to establish and head Wayne State's immunology efforts. In 1982, he went to Johns Hopkins, where he chaired the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases for 11 years. He currently is a professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, the Department of Medicine and Department of Environmental Health Sciences. He also is director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Autoimmune Disease in Baltimore, which he has headed since 1968.

Rose's current research is related to self-non-self discrimination and autoimmune disease. He has published more than 500 articles and abstracts in professional journals and has edited 10 books. He is editor in chief of Clinical Immunology and Immunopathology and sits on several editorial boards.