Jack A. Elias

Biography

Dr. Jack A. Elias is Brown University's seventh dean of medicine and biological sciences and its first senior vice president for health affairs. He earned his bachelor’s degree and MD at the University of Pennsylvania, served an internship at Tufts-New England Medical Center, and completed residency in medicine and fellowships in both pulmonary and critical care medicine and allergy and clinical immunology at the University of Pennsylvania. In a professional career spanning more than 30 years, Dr. Elias has cared for patients with a wide variety of lung ailments including those in intensive care and patients with immune and allergic disorders. He has also conducted research on a number of conditions including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, pulmonary fibrosis, and the effects of smoking. His NIH-funded laboratory focuses on the cell and molecular biology of lung injury and repair. A recent focus is the biology of chitinases and chitinase-like proteins including the protein chitinase 3-like-1 and its role in pulmonary diseases. Most recently, he and his colleagues have begun development of a new drug to treat asthma. An immunobiologist, Dr. Elias has trained scores of young researchers, published more than 230 original peer-reviewed research papers and holds several patents with more pending. Dean Elias is a member of the Institute of Medicine and served as president of the Association of American Physicians. Prior to coming to Brown, he held appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and was Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine.

Research Interest

 Pulmonary and Critical care