Donal O'Leary, Ph.D., professor of Physiology and director of Cardiovascular Research for the Wayne State University School of Medicine, has been named a Charles H. Gershenson Distinguished Faculty Fellow, an honor established by the university's Board of Governors to recognize and provide support for faculty whose continuing achievements and activities in scholarship, research or the fine and performing arts are nationally distinguished.

Dr. O'Leary is a cardiovascular physiologist interested in the integrative control of the cardiovascular system at rest and during stress.

He is an internationally recognized researcher whose studies in the areas of cardiovascular health and physiology have resulted in more than 100 significant publications. He has contributed more than $10 million in external research support for Wayne State University.

Contributing significantly to undergraduate and graduate student education, Dr. O'Leary teaches foundational courses in the school of medicine and as a thesis advisor has matriculated 21 doctoral trainees.

"I am honored to receive a Distinguished Faculty Fellowship for the second time," he said. "I have had the great fortune over the years to have interacted with a number of talented and hardworking students, post-doctoral fellows, research assistants and research associates, as well as my colleagues at Wayne State and other institutions. It takes a team effort to conduct our research and I am proud to be associated with all of these exceptional individuals."

His research is continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and focuses on understanding the neural and hormonal mechanisms of control of arterial blood pressure, heart rate, cardiac output, regional blood flow and sympathetic nerve activity during dynamic exercise. The work has been internationally recognized and honored.

His recent findings include determining the relative roles of the arterial baroreflex and the muscle metaboreflex (reflex responses to ischemia of active skeletal muscle) in the control of the cardiovascular system in normal and pathophysiological states such as congestive heart failure.

Dr. O'Leary also is investigating the role of purinergic mechanisms within the nucleus tractus solitarius in cardio-respiratory homeostasis, regional blood flow and peripheral sympathetic nerve activity. The goals of these studies are to elucidate further the relative roles of cardiovascular reflexes in the control of the cardiovascular system, their interactions and their mechanisms of action.

The two-year fellowships, established in 1985, are named for Charles H. Gershenson, a former member of the university's Board of Governors. There have been only 76 fellowships awarded since that first year.