8 July 2008

Husband and wife to be honoured at Dundee

Photo opportunity - 2 pm, Tuesday July 8th,
Robing Room, Dundee City Chambers
Mr & Mrs Wood will be available for pictures before the graduation ceremony

A husband and wife who have each gone on to become world leaders in their respective fields after graduating from the University of Dundee will be honoured when they return to the University this week.

Professors Alastair and Margaret Wood will each be awarded honorary degrees at the Graduation ceremony for the School of Medicine on Tuesday July 8th.

"Alastair and Margaret Wood are outstanding examples to all our medical students - a couple who have built on their education at Dundee to go on to have a hugely significant impact on world medicine," said Sir Alan Langlands, Principal of the University.

"We are delighted to welcome them back to Dundee for this very happy occasion and to honour them in this way."

The couple had the sort of first meeting only medics could claim, while studying medicine at the University in the 1960s - in the anatomy dissection room over a cadaver!

Both graduated from Dundee as part of the class of 1970 and carried on their training as Senior House Officers in Ninewells Hospital, Dundee Royal Infirmary and the surrounding area.

They subsequently moved to Vanderbilt University in 1976 and have since built hugely respected careers - Alastair in the field of pharmacology and Margaret in anaesthesiology.

The couple have co-authored two editions of the standard anaesthesia textbook, Drugs and Anaesthesia: Pharmacology for Anaesthesiologists, among hundreds of other published research papers and textbooks.

Mr Wood currently holds a position on the management team of Symphony Capital LLC, a biopharmaceutical investment firm in New York, after a long academic career at Vanderbilt.

Mrs Wood is E. M. Papper Professor of Anaesthesiology at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York.

NOTES TO EDITORS
Professor Alastair Wood graduated as Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MB ChB) from the University of Dundee Medical School in 1970.

After postgraduate training and serving as a lecturer and research fellow at Dundee University, Professor Wood moved to Vanderbilt University in the United States in 1976 as a research fellow in Clinical Pharmacology.

He was appointed assistant professor of Medicine and Pharmacology two years later, and quickly made his mark in the field of drug metabolism - understanding why patients respond differently to medications.

During the past 30 years, Professor Wood has written or coauthored more than 300 scientific papers and won numerous honors. He has been a member of and chaired National Institutes of Health study sections, served on the editorial boards of four major journals, and between 1992 and 2004 was drug therapy editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

A candidate for the US Food and Drug Administration’s commissioner's post in 2001, he served as a member of the FDA's Cardiovascular and Renal Advisory committee and also chaired the agency's Nonprescription Drug Advisory committee.

In 2000, Professor Wood was appointed Assistant Vice-Chancellor for Research at Vanderbilt.

He now holds a position on the management team of Symphony Capital LLC, a biopharmaceutical investment firm in New York.

Professor Margaret Wood is E. M. Papper Professor of Anaesthesiology at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York.

She graduated from the University of Dundee in 1970, carrying out her anaesthesiology training at both Ninewells Hospital and Dundee Royal Infirmary. In 1976 she moved with her husband Alastair to the United States to undertake fellowship training at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Margaret remained in Nashville for the next 20 years, eventually becoming Professor of Anaesthesiology.

In 1996 she was appointed to her post at Columbia and made Chair of her department, the first time a woman had ever held the prestigious post.

Over the past three decades, she has published over 140 articles and book chapters and has lectured extensively on anaesthesia, drugs disposition and ageing and anaesthesia.

For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk