Anesthesiology Chair to Head National Anesthesiology Society

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Mark J. Lema, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Anesthesiology in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, will be installed as president of the 40,000-member American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) during the organization's annual meeting in Chicago Oct. 14-18.

Lema also is chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine and Critical Care at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo.

An active member of the ASA since 1991, Lema served on many committees and task forces before joining the society's board of directors in 2002. He served as ASA's first vice-president in 2004-05 and as president-elect in 2005-06.

A graduate of Canisius College in Buffalo, Lema earned master's and doctoral degrees from UB and his medical degree from Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. He completed his anesthesiology residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in 1985, and then a two-year research fellowship in anesthesiology at the hospital.

Lema returned to Western New York in 1987 to assume the anesthesiology chairmanship at Roswell Park, and was named chair of the UB department in 2001.

Lema lives in East Amherst.