E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, University of Maryland School of Medicine
E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, has committed his career to improving world health through skillful leadership of pioneering innovations in academic medicine.
Dr. Reece is an ardent champion of “big science” research, clinical service excellence, and cutting-edge innovations in medical education. Through dedicated service to notable committees and federal panels, he has earned a solid reputation as an effective and collaborative leader. Dr. Reece currently chairs the National Academy of Medicine Annual Meetings Program Committee, which helps inform national health policies. He is a member of the Governing Council of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Research Council Board, and the Executive Committee for Research!America, and was previously chair of the AAMC Council of Deans.
Dr. Reece is an influential voice in the national health care discussion and a steady advocate for increasing biomedical research funding. He has held appointments within the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other federal agencies.
In Maryland, Dr. Reece led the Governor’s Task Force to dissolve the state’s systemic health barriers. Its recommendations led to passage of the Maryland Health Improvement and Disparities Reduction Act of 2012, which included a new statewide program, the Health Enterprise Zones.
Several academic health centers have benefited from Dr. Reece’s leadership, including Yale University (director, Diabetes Study Unit); Temple University (chair, obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences); the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (vice chancellor and dean of the College of Medicine); and the University of Maryland, where he now serves as vice president for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine. He is among the longest-serving deans in the United States.
Dr. Reece’s recognition that tomorrow’s physicians must possess greater analytic and critical thinking skills to process massive data sets led to the development of a new required course, Foundations in Research and Critical Thinking, at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. It now serves as a national model.
“Dr. Reece is an academic medicine leader of the highest caliber,” says Ralph Snyderman, MD, chancellor emeritus of Duke University. “He has demonstrated vision, strength of character, and veracity in preserving academic medicine’s most honored traditions, while creating space for innovation to flourish.”
As a physician-scientist and scholar, Dr. Reece works tirelessly to improve the lives of mothers and infants. His NIH-funded laboratory research continues to illuminate the dominant biochemical and biomolecular mechanisms that underpin diabetes-induced birth defects, and has pioneered potential therapeutic interventions.
A native of Jamaica, Dr. Reece received his MD from New York University School of Medicine; MBA from the Fox School of Business and Management at Temple University; and PhD in Biochemistry from the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. He completed postgraduate training in obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center and fellowship training in maternal-fetal medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. He remained on the Yale full-time faculty for nearly 10 years.