May 31, 2001
Contact: Jennifer Day, (313) 577-1058, jday@med.wayne.edu

Director of U.S. Office for Human Research Protections to speak at WSU Dean’s Distinguished Lecture May 24

Greg Koski, MD, PhD, director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Human Research Protections, will speak May 24 at a Wayne State University School of Medicine Dean’s Distinguished Lecture.

Dr. Koski, the first person to hold his post in the newly created federal office, will give a lecture, “Integrity, Caring and Trust: The Foundations of Responsible Human Research,” to a diverse audience that will include many current WSU medical researchers.

The event will be at 4 p.m. in the Green Auditorium in Gordon Scott Hall of Basic Medical Sciences, 540 E. Canfield. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, please call (313) 577-1335.

Before accepting his current post late last year, Dr. Koski had been director of human research affairs for Partners Healthcare System at Massachusetts General Hospital and his alma mater, Harvard Medical School.

During his 30 years at Harvard, Dr. Koski actively participated in every aspect of academic medicine, including basic research, clinical investigation, teaching, administration and patient care. He has been both an Internal Review Board chair and a research subject. Within the Department of Anesthesia, Dr. Koski was a senior member of the Cardiac Anesthesia Group. He also served as director of the department’s Henry K. Beecher Memorial Research Laboratories and as director of resident selection and recruitment.

As director of human research affairs at Partners Healthcare, Dr. Koski was responsible for the ethical and regulatory oversight of human investigation, including protection of human participants in research studies.

Dr. Koski’s interest in the protection of human subjects and research ethics grew strongly after joining the Subcommittee on Human Studies of Massachusetts General Hospital in 1989. This committee, established in 1963 under the leadership of Dr. Henry Beecher, became Dr. Koski’s training ground for his latest challenge as director of the Office for Human Research Protections.

The WSU School of Medicine Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series was initiated in 1993 to provide a forum for education and discussion of issues related to academic medicine with relevance to physicians, administrators and other health care professionals.

With more than 1,000 medical students, WSU is among the nation’s largest medical schools. Together with the Detroit Medical Center, the school is a leader in patient care and medical research in a number of areas including cancer, genetics, pediatrics and the neurosciences.