DR. TODD K. ROSENGART APPOINTED INTERIM CHAIRMAN OF SURGERY: Our Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery Assumes New Leadership Role

In July 2008, with reorganization of the medical school, Todd K. Rosengart, MD, professor of surgery and chief of cardiothoracic surgery, was appointed interim chairman (chief) of surgery. He follows John J. Ricotta, MD, who, after serving as our chairman for 11 years, has left Stony Brook to head the surgery department at Washington Medical Center, in Washington, DC.

Dr. Rosengart joined our faculty in 2006. A nationally recognized leader in cardiac surgery, he came to Stony Brook from Northwestern University's School of Medicine in Chicago, where he was professor of surgery and chief of cardiothoracic surgery at its affiliated hospitals of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare.

The recipient of numerous honors and awards for excellence as both a clinician and scientist, Dr. Rosengart is a cardiothoracic surgeon with active research interests in cardiac surgery. Since joining our faculty, he has served as co-director of the Stony Brook University Heart Center, and will continue to do so.

Recently, Dr. Rosengart was selected for inclusion in the Castle Connolly Guide, America's Top Doctors; featured in the Castle Connolly Guide, Top Doctors: New York Metro Area (previously featured in the Castle Connolly Guide, Best Doctors in Chicago); selected for inclusion in the Consumers' Research Council of America Guide to America's Top Surgeons; listed in Marquis Who's Who in America; and listed in the Millennium Edition of Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare.

Dr. Rosengart received his medical doctorate from Northwestern University in 1983. He was in the prestigious Medical Honors Program there. He completed his residency training at New York University (NYU Medical Center; 1989), and his fellowship training in cardiothoracic surgery at New York Hospital (1991).

Before joining the faculty at Northwestern University in 1999, Dr. Rosengart was an associate professor of cardiothoracic surgery at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and associate attending cardiothoracic surgeon at New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he performed the world's first open-heart gene therapy.

He also served as a medical staff fellow from 1985 to 1987 in the Surgery Branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and as an honorary senior registrar in pediatric cardiac surgery at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London, England.

Dr. Rosengart is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Cardiology, and a member of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and the American Association of Thoracic Surgery.

He has served on the Executive Leadership Committee for the American Heart Association (AHA) Cardiovascular Surgery and Anesthesia Council, among other professional societies and committees. He was a founding member of the national 21st Century Cardiac Surgical Society.

An active academic surgeon, Dr. Rosengart has authored over 100 publications, and is an NIH-funded researcher. He has recently been asked to chair the AHA's Region I Bioengineering and Biotechnology Study Group for research grant selections, and has previously served on NIH study sections.

Dr. Rosengart serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, and as a manuscript reviewer for journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Circulation, and Annals of Thoracic Surgery. He has been a contributing editor to Seminars in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and CT Digest, among other scholarly medical publications.