One of the nation's foremost academic pathologists and an authority on epithelial cell biology and on gastrointestinal disease, James L. Madara, M.D., was appointed in 2002 as dean of the Division of the Biological Sciences, dean of the Pritzker School of Medicine and vice president for Medical Affairs at the University of Chicago. Following a successful first term, he was reappointed by University of Chicago President Robert F. Zimmer in 2007 for a second five-year term.

During his first term, research funding to the University from the National Institutes of Health increased approximately 75 percent. Clinical and research space expanded as well, including the opening of Comer Children's Hospital and the Gordon Center for Integrative Science -- the largest research building on campus. Currently, a University biomedical building is being constructed at Argonne, another campus biomedical tower is being completed, and a new adult hospital is being constructed. Recruiting an array of respected and notable department chairs, faculty researchers, educators and clinicians has been another key accomplishment during his tenure, with the vast majority of the 21 departments (two of which were newly created) having new leadership since 2002.

In June 2006, in an effort to bring biomedical research, education, and patient care at the University of Chicago and its hospitals even closer together, the boards of trustees at the University and the hospitals agreed to concentrate leadership of the entire biomedical enterprise under a single chief executive. They selected Dr. Madara to be the first chief executive officer of the University of Chicago Medical Center. In that position he oversaw the restructuring of the Medical Center's organization and governance, and led the faculty and staff through the transition.

Dr. Madara graduated from Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia in 1975, completed residency and research training in pathology at Harvard, and joined the faculty at Brigham and Women's Hospital in 1980, serving as director of the Division of Gastrointestinal Pathology.

He spent the first 17 years of his faculty career at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital, rising through the ranks to become a professor of pathology in 1993 and director of the Harvard Digestive Diseases Center in 1994. During this time, Dr. Madara published more than 200 original papers and chapters making important contributions to understanding the biology of the cells that line the digestive tract. He has explored and clarified how these cells permit the absorption of nutrients while serving as a barrier to intestinal bacteria, and how these cells help regulate the immune response to normal and disease-causing bacteria. This research has been crucial to understanding infectious diseases that affect the intestine, to treating inflammatory disorders such as ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease, and to improving drug delivery.

In recognition of his research, Dr. Madara received several awards including the 1990 Warner-Lambert/Parke Davis Award from the American Association of Pathologists, the 1991 Physician Scientist Award from the American Gastroenterological Association, the 1994 International State-of-the-Art Lectureship by the British Society of Gastroenterology and the 2002 International Prize for Distinguished Research in Digestive Disease (from the American Gastroenterological Association). In 1997, he was elected to the Association of American Physicians and received a prestigious MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health. He has served on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, as editor in chief of the American Journal of Pathology and as chair of the NIH General Medicine A2 Study section. He also has served as the president of the American Board of Pathology.

In 1997, he left Harvard to become the chairman of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the William Patterson Timmie Professor at Emory University Medical School in Atlanta. He served as chairman of the department until he came to the University of Chicago in 2002.

Dr. Madara is married to Vicki M. Madara. They have two children: Alexis and Max.