Wayne State University will present an honorary degree to Mary Woolley for advancing policies that lead to better education for students and that protect and improve the health of the public during the May 18 commencement ceremony for the School of Medicine.
The Class of 2015 commencement ceremony will begin at 1 p.m. at the Fox Theatre in Detroit.
Valerie M. Parisi, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., former dean of the School of Medicine, will give the keynote address.
Woolley is the president of Research!America, the nation's largest not-for-profit public education and advocacy organization committed to making medical and health research a higher national priority. Under her leadership, Research!America has earned the attention and respect of elected and appointed officials; researchers in the public, private and academic sectors; media; and community leaders with its record of innovation in advocacy for research. Research!America's reports and publications, Web sites and constituent education initiatives have been honored by leading regional and international communications and advocacy organizations.
An elected member of the Institute of Medicine, Woolley served two terms on its governing council. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and serves on the National Academy of Sciences Board on Life Sciences. She is a founding member of the Board of Associates of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, is a member of the board of the Institute of Systems Biology, a member of the visiting committee of the University of Chicago Medical Center and a member of the National Council for Johns Hopkins Nursing. She has served as president of the Association of Independent Research Institutes, as a reviewer for the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, and as a consultant to several research organizations.
Her op-eds and letters to the editor are published in newspapers and magazines from coast to coast, including The New York Times and Washington Post. She has been published in Science, Nature, Issues in Science and Technology, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association and The Scientist. She is frequently interviewed by science, news and policy journalists, and has received recognition by PBS as an "Unsung Heroine."
For her work on behalf of medical research, she has been honored as a Woman of Vision by the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science and has received the American Hospital Association Silver Touchstone Award for Public Affairs Programming, the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Dean's Award for Distinguished Service, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Special Award for Science Advocacy, the Friends of the National Institute for Nursing Research Health Advocacy Award, the Awareness and Advocacy Award from the Clinical Research Forum and the Friends of the National Library of Medicine Paul G. Rogers Public Service Award.
In her early career, Woolley served as San Francisco project director for the then largest-ever National Institutes of Health-funded clinical trial, the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial, a randomized, primary prevention trial conducted from 1973 to 1982 to test whether lowering cholesterol and diastolic blood pressure and ceasing cigarette smoking would reduce coronary heart disease mortality.
In 1981, she became administrator of the Medical Research Institute of San Francisco, and in 1986 was named the Institute's executive director and chief executive officer. Woolley has served as president and CEO of Research!America since 1990.
For more information on the commencement ceremony, visit http://studentaffairs.med.wayne.edu/commencement/index.php.