University of Cincinnati Honors Faculty, Alumni with Drake Medals

The UC College of Medicine has honored three physicians with the Daniel Drake Medal, the highest honor offered by the college.

Thomas Boat, MD, Thomas Fogarty, MD, and Martin Samuels, MD, received their medals at the College of Medicine’s Honors Day celebration Saturday, May 21, at the Aronoff Center for the Arts in Cincinnati.

“The 2005 Drake Medal recipients are prime examples of the excellent faculty we recruit and physicians we produce,” said Ronald A. Sacher, MD, interim dean of the UC College of Medicine. “It’s a great pleasure to acknowledge the leadership provided by Dr. Boat each day, and it is equally impressive to see the contributions UC alumni Drs. Fogarty and Samuels have made to patient care and education.”

The Drake Medal recognizes distinguished living faculty or alumni who have made outstanding or unique contributions to medical education, scholarship or research. The award commemorates the frontier physician Daniel Drake, MD, who founded the original medical school in 1819.

Thomas Boat, MD

Dr. Boat is director of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Research Foundation and chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at UC. He also is physician-in-chief and a member of the board of trustees of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Dr. Boat served as interim provost for health affairs at UC in 2003.

A pediatric pulmonologist, Dr. Boat worked early in his career to define the pathophysiology of airway dysfunction and develop more effective therapies for chronic lung diseases of childhood, such as cystic fibrosis. More recently he has worked at local and national levels to expand child health research, enhance subspecialty training, and improve clinical outcomes and family and caregiver satisfaction in pediatrics.

Dr. Boat joined Cincinnati Children’s in 1993 after serving as chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Previously, he was co-director of the Cystic Fibrosis Center at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland.

When Dr. Boat joined Cincinnati Children’s and UC, the Department of Pediatrics included 144 faculty members, with total external grant funding of less than $20 million. Today the department has more than 375 full- and part-time faculty. Total sponsored-program awards now exceed $125 million, including $85 million in annual National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. In addition, more than 20 new division chiefs have been appointed since 1993, and nearly a dozen new divisions or programs have been created. He has also fostered improvement of patient care and translational research, resulting in rapid growth of clinical programs and measurable improvements in child health care delivery and outcomes.

Thomas Fogarty, MD

Dr. Fogarty is an internationally recognized cardiovascular surgeon, inventor, entrepreneur and vintner. He has been involved with a wide range of innovations in business and technology and has founded and served as chairman or board member of more than 30 businesses and research companies that work with devices designed and developed by Fogarty Engineering Inc.

Dr. Fogarty is recognized by his colleagues as one of the best academicians in the U.S. at commercializing an invention.

During the past 40 years, Dr. Fogarty has acquired over 100 surgical patents, including the “industry standard” Fogarty balloon embolectomy catheter—universally known as the Fogarty catheter. He developed the catheter, one of his most notable inventions, while studying at UC—before he had even completed his medical degree.

Dr. Fogarty was born in Cincinnati and received his undergraduate education at Xavier University and his medical degree from the University of Cincinnati. He completed his residency at the University of Oregon and from 1973 to1975 served as medical staff president at Stanford Medical Center. Dr. Fogarty is a co-founder of the California venture capital firm Arch Venture Capital and provides venture capital to other medical device inventors devoted to solving “real-life” clinical problems.

In 1993, after 13 years directing the cardiovascular surgery program at Sequoia Hospital, Redwood City, Calif., he returned to academic life as professor of surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Martin Samuels, MD

Dr. Samuels, neurologist-in-chief and chairman of the Department of Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, is a leading authority on neuromedicine, a field he is primarily responsible for defining.

Born and raised in Cleveland, Dr. Samuels received his bachelor’s degree from Williams College and his MD at UC. After training in internal medicine at Boston City Hospital and in neurology at Massachusetts General, he joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School and rose to the rank of full professor. As one of the first at Harvard to be promoted to that rank by teacher-clinician criteria, he is considered the prototype in the development of these pathways for academic promotion.

Renowned as an educator, Dr. Samuels created the only one-person, full-day neurological medicine course ever presented at the national meetings of the American Academy of Neurology, the largest neurological society meeting in the world. 

He frequently delivers the update in neurology at the annual meeting of the American College of Physicians, a presentation that has repeatedly been ranked the best at this major meeting of internists. He is also the major neurological contributor to the national meetings of the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Family Physicians.