HERSHEY, Pa. -- Dr. Leslie Parent, chief of Penn State College of Medicine’s Division of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology, has been named vice dean for research and graduate studies for the College of Medicine and Medical Center, and associate vice president for research at Penn State University, effective June 1.
Parent graduated from Dartmouth College in 1983 and earned her doctor of medicine degree at Duke University School of Medicine in 1987. During medical school, she was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Scholar at the National Institutes of Health, and she was elected into Alpha Omega Alpha. She completed her residency in the clinician-investigator pathway in internal medicine at Duke. In 1991, she arrived at the College of Medicine as a fellow in infectious diseases, and in 1995 she was appointed as an assistant professor.
Parent rose through the ranks until achieving her current position as a tenured professor of medicine with a joint appointment in microbiology and immunology and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology. She has served in several leadership roles, including co-director of the MD/PhD Program, co-leader of pilot studies in the Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute, chair of the College of Medicine Promotion and Tenure Committee, and co-chair of the Scientific Review Committee. She has been recognized with numerous honors and awards, including the Hinkle Society Outstanding Junior Investigator Award; Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching; the Excellence in Mentoring Award from the Department of Medicine; and being named a fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology, American College of Physicians, and the Infectious Disease Society of America.
Parent is a highly respected physician-scientist whose research focuses on understanding how retroviruses, including the human immunodeficiency virus, co-opt cellular machinery to assemble new virus particles to spread infection. She has been funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1993, and she currently has an R01 and a project on a P50 Center grant to support her research laboratory. She has served on NIH study sections and she is on the editorial board of the Journal of Virology.
Sheila Vrana, associate dean for research and associate professor of pharmacology, had served as interim vice dean for research and graduate studies since August 2014, following the departure of Dr. Daniel Notterman, who returned to teaching at Princeton University.