ORA Attracts National Speakers to Winter Meeting
Two of the nation’s renowned rheumatology researchers, Dr Daniel Furst and Dr Matthew Liang, speak at ORA’s annual Winter Meeting in Portland this month.
Dr Furst holds the Carl Pearson Chair in the Division of Rheumatology at UCLA. After completing his training at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and his rheumatology Fellowship at the UCLA Medical Center, he was the Director of Arthritis Clinical Research at the Virginia Mason Research Center in Seattle. He is the Chairman of the ACR Program Meeting Committee and has served as co-chairman of the DMARD Guidelines Update Committee and as Vice President of the Scleroderma Clinical Trials Consortium.
Dr Furst has published over 300 research articles including co-authorship of a text book on Scleroderma. He is the pioneer investigator in the use of stem cell treatment in Scleroderma. His lecture “Stem Cell Transplantation in Autoimmune Rheumatic Disease: to do or not to do?” brings to light this thought-provoking debate.
A Robert Woods Johnson Scholar in the Division of Rheumatology at Stanford University, where he completed his fellowship, Dr Liang is the Director of the Robert B. Brigham Multipurpose Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases Center at Brigham Women’s Hospital. He directs the clinical research training program in rheumatology and is a member of the BWH Research Institute’s Clinical Research Committee. He is also on the faculty at the University of British Columbia.
His research interests include basic methodological work in clinimetrics, clinical trials, the epidemiology of rheumatic disease and disability, the identification of modifiable risk factors in high risk and disadvantaged populations, and clinical decision making. Dr Liang’s lecture on “Systemic Lupus and Atherosclerosis: A Perspective” brings us the latest in clinical research.