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Obituaries
Memorial services have been scheduled for UB faculty members Beverly Petterson Bishop and Allan Oseroff, both of whom died recently.
The service for Bishop, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, will be held at 4 p.m. Oct. 30 in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, North Campus.
The service for Allan Oseroff, chair of the departments of Dermatology at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, will be held on Dec. 19 at Roswell Park.
Bishop, a member of the UB faculty for more than 50 years, died on Sept. 20.
Her research interests included the identification and analysis of the ways the nervous system controls muscle activity in both humans and animals. Her experimental work focused on the neural regulation of the respiratory muscles.
She was the author of more than 150 scholarly articles and the editor of four books.
A recipient of the SUNY Chancellor Award for Excellence in Teaching, Bishop taught physiology to thousands of UB students during her 50 years on the faculty. She taught neurophysiology to nearly 40 classes of physical therapy students and produced monographs and book chapters that became seminal to that area.
She contributed her knowledge and expertise to the creation of the American Physiological Society's (APS) slide-tape program in neurophysiology and served the society as a leader of the Central Nervous System Section and as a member of the APS Council.
Bishop served as chair of the Membership Advisory Committee of the American Physiological Association and as a member of numerous other APA committees. She also served a three-year term on the Respiration and Applied Physiology Study Section of the National Institutes of Health.
She was a member of the American Physiology Society and was an elected member of its governing council.
Bishop earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Syracuse University, a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Rochester and a doctorate in physiology from UB.
She and her husband of 64 years, Charles W. Bishop, UB associate professor emeritus of medicine, piloted their Cessna 210 all over the country.
Donations may be made to continue a fund Bishop started to support student participation at national neurophysiology meetings. Checks made payable to the UB Foundation and sent to the Beverly P. Bishop Memorial Fund in Physiology & Biophysics, 124 Sherman Hall, South Campus.
Graveside services were held on Oct. 19 in Forest Lawn Cemetery for Oseroff, who died of cancer Oct. 16. He was 65.
Oseroff joined the faculty at UB and RPCI in 1990. He was appointed interim chair in 2000 and chair in 2001.
Michael Cain, dean of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, called Oseroff “an exemplary model for translational research, ushering scientific advances from the laboratory through successful clinical application at the bedside.”
Oseroff, who held a doctorate in applied physics from Harvard and a medical degree from Yale, played an instrumental role in obtaining FDA approval for photodynamic therapy as a treatment for skin cancer, and also served as co-leader for RPCI's Cell Stress and Biophysical Therapy Program, Cain said.
He was “internationally respected as a compassionate physician, brilliant scientist, supportive mentor and colleague, and a good friend. He was a leader in setting the national standards for non-melanoma skin cancer as a participant on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Guidelines Panel for skin cancer,” Cain added.
Oseroff authored or co-authored more than 200 publications and held more than 20 major research grants, including the highly coveted nanotechnology platform grant from the National Cancer Institute.
He held joint appointments in Molecular and Cellular Biophysics, and Pharmacology and Therapeutics at RPCI and was the recipient of the Lawrence and Joan Castellani Family Chair in Dermatology.
Oseroff is survived by his wife, Stephanie H. Pincus, professor emeritus and former chair of the UB Department of Dermatology.
Donations may be made to RPCI’s Alliance Foundation.
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