David M. Lewinsohn, M.D., Ph.D., selected as director of M.D./Ph.D. Program

The OHSU School of Medicine is pleased to announce that David M. Lewinsohn, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and of pediatrics, has been selected as the new director of the M.D./Ph.D Training Program, a six-year Graduate Studies program in which students earn both degrees as they build toward a career as a physician scientist.  

Dr. Lewinsohn succeeds David Jacoby, M.D., dean of the School of Medicine, who served as program director for 15 years, growing it from two new students each year to eight.

Dr. Lewinsohn is vice chair for research in the Department of Medicine and director of the OHSU Center for Global Health Research at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, both positions he will maintain. He has served as the director of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine (PCCM) T-32 Fellowship Program and has mentored M.D./Ph.D. students and junior physician scientist faculty. In his vice chair for research role, he has supported physician scientists through the Department of Medicine’s Wheels Up career development program.  

“Dr. Lewinsohn is both an outstanding scientist and an outstanding educator, and he has extensive experience successfully mentoring young physician-scientists,” said Allison Fryer, Ph.D., associate dean for Graduate Studies. “His experience as a longstanding director of the research portion of the fellowship in pulmonary, allergy, and critical care, and principal investigator on the National Institutes of Health T32 training grant in lung research will serve him well in this new role.”  

Dr. Lewinsohn’s research has focused on tuberculosis, specifically the immune recognition of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis cell by human T cells.  While mechanistic in nature, his work has led to both diagnostic and vaccine applications. He is a member of the OHSU Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute and is also adjunct professor of molecular microbiology and immunology.

Outside of OHSU, he has been committed to developing translational scientists through ongoing collaborations with Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and through his work with the StopTB Partnership where he chairs the vaccines working group and has established an Early Career Investigators network. He is an adjunct member of the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town.

Dr. Lewinsohn earned his M.D./Ph.D. at Stanford University. He did an internal medicine internship and his residency at University of California, San Francisco, working as a staff physician at San Francisco Veterans Administration Hospital. He did a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Washington and then served as an investigator and a senior fellow before coming to OHSU in 1998.  

Among his goals for the M.D./Ph.D. Training Program is to more deeply integrate the program with the larger physician scientist community at OHSU.  

“I am honored and delighted to take on this leadership role,” Dr. Lewinsohn said. “I am committed to supporting the next generation of translational scientists, and believe deeply in the capacity for good when you can work across the research and clinical continuum. Our students are remarkable individuals and I am looking forward to learning from them.”