Hopkins Children’s Center neonatologist Edward (Ned) Lawson was installed as the inaugural Josephine S. Sutland Professor in Newborn Medicine, Sept. 22, in a ceremony at Johns Hopkins. The professorship is a gift from the families of Josephine and Frank V. Sutland, D.D.S., and Sheila and Lawrence Pakula, M.D., which also established an endowment for neonatal research and construction of the 45-bed neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in the new The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center, opening at Johns Hopkins in April 2012. The new NICU will be known as The Sutland/Pakula Family Newborn Critical Care Center.    PRESS RELEASE
 

In thanking the families that afternoon for their generous support of research, training and clinical care, Hopkins Children’s Center Director George Dover, M.D., said: “Your names will forever be associated with neonatal care and research, and the countless children who will benefit.” 

And an endowed professorship, he added, “provides the stability and flexibility needed for our faculty to take advantage of the important opportunities for innovation, research and the treatment of patients.” 

The director of the Sutland/Pakula Family Newborn Critical Care Center, in the Division of Neonatal and Perinatal Medicine, and vice chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Hopkins Children’s, Lawson joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 1999. A 1968 graduate of Harvard College,  he earned his medical degree at Northwestern University Medical School, before returning to Harvard to complete a pediatric residency and a neonatal fellowship.He joined Johns Hopkins from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was vice chair of thedepartment of pediatrics and chief of the division of neonatology. A noted expert in the neurophysiology of respiratory control in newborns, he has been a leader in  transforming the Hopkins Children’s Center NICU over the past 12 years, increasing its number of beds to 45, and integrating the Bayview Medical Center NICU  and Hopkins Children’s Center’s into a single operation.   

In formally accepting the professorship, Sept. 22,on behalf of the university, Johns Hopkins University President Ronald Daniels praised Lawson as “an accomplished clinician, scientist, leader and teacher who is shaping the future of neonatology. 

“He has helped build out laboratory space for our research faculty, and designed what will be a world-class NICU in The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center,” Daniels continued. “His research has broken new ground in our understanding of the neurophysiology of respiratory control in newborns." 

A dentist in Troy-Albany, N.Y., Frank  V. Sutland died in 1989 and his wife, Josephine, a longtime friend of Johns Hopkins, in 2008.Learn more. Their daughter, Sheila Pakula, is a member of The Johns Hopkins Women’s Board and, like her husband, serves on the Hopkins Children’s Center National Advisory Board. Lawrence Pakula is an associate professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins and a co-founder of Pavilion Pediatrics in Green Spring Station in Lutherville, Md. He is chairman of the board of Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital – which is co-owned by Johns Hopkins Health System and University of Maryland Medical System – and serves on the board of The Hospital for the Consumptives of Maryland (Eudowood) Foundation as well as The Robert Garrett Fund for the Surgical Treatment of Children, founded by Mary F. Jacobs, which supports pediatric surgery at Johns Hopkins.  

The new Sheila S. and Lawrence C. Pakula, M.D., Fellows at Johns Hopkins are Azadeh Farzin, M.D., Adam Hartman, M.D., and Jenny Yu, M.D. 

A graduate of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Farzin completed her pediatric residency at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in 2007 and a fellowship in neonatal-perinatal medicine at the University of California Los Angeles. Her recent research is focused on prevention and early diagnosis of neonatal infectious diseases. She joins Johns Hopkins this fall.  

Co-director of the Neurology Intensive Care Nursery at Hopkins Children’s and associate program director of the Pediatric Neurology Residency Program, Hartman received his medical degree from Northwestern University Medical School and completed his residency in pediatrics at the National Naval Medical Center and Walter Reed Army Medical Center.At Johns Hopkins, he completed both a residency in pediatric neurology and a fellowship in clinical neurophysiology/pediatric epilepsy.   

Jenny Yu received her medical degree at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. She completed her pediatrics residency at Phoenix Children’s Hospital in Phoenix, Az., and, recently, the Neonatal Perinatal Fellowship Program at Harvard.She is interested in developmental processes that render the immature brain vulnerable to hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy and neonatal seizures.   

In 1991, Mrs. Sutland, along with her family, also established the Dr. Frank V. Sutland Chair in Pediatric Genetics at Johns Hopkins.