Cleveland Clinic’s Serpil Erzurum, M.D., Elected to Prestigious National Academy of Medicine

Serpil Erzurum, M.D., chair of Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.

NAM is formerly the Institute of Medicine, which was established in 1970 under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences to advise the nation on medical and health issues. Members are elected to the NAM by their peers for major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, healthcare and public health.

Dr. Erzurum’s scientific and clinical accomplishments have been broad and far-reaching in impact for respiratory medicine. Her groundbreaking translational research has uncovered mechanisms of pulmonary hypertension and asthma, and led to diagnostic and therapeutic advances in lung diseases.

“Serpil is the rare ‘triple threat’ physician scientist, excelling as a researcher, clinician and educator,” said Herbert Wiedemann, M.D., Chairman of Cleveland Clinic Respiratory Institute. “Over the past three decades as a leader in respiratory medicine, she achieved her vision of accelerating research to impact patient care, more rapidly bringing scientific discoveries from the lab to the bedside. Serpil is also an inspiring role model and mentor, attracting young physicians and scientists to the excitement and rewards of making original discoveries.”

A member of Cleveland Clinic’s staff since 1993, Dr. Erzurum was appointed in 2016 as chair of the Lerner Research Institute, home to all basic, translational and clinical research at Cleveland Clinic. The Lerner Research Institute is one of the largest research institutes in the nation with more than $260 million in research funding annually and 1,500 researchers and support personnel.

Dr. Erzurum is founding chair of the Department of Pathobiology, a professor at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and a staff physician in the Respiratory Institute. She holds the Alfred Lerner Memorial Chair in Innovative Biomedical Research. She has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and has been principal investigator on more than 20 federal grants with more than $60 million in research funding, including several large, multi-investigator program project grants and network trials. Dr. Erzurum has earned numerous awards, including the MERIT award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and Association of American Physicians (AAP), and recently the Scientific Achievement Award from the American Thoracic Society. Because of her extensive and successful mentoring of trainees and junior faculty, she was honored with the Elizabeth Rich Award from the American Thoracic Society for her work in advancing the careers of women in medicine and science. In addition to her leadership at Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Erzurum has served the profession as chair of the Allergy, Immunology and Inflammation Assembly of the American Thoracic Society, councilor and president of the AAP, member of NHLBI research strategic planning and NHLBI Advisory Council, and chair of the Pulmonary Disease Board of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). Dr. Erzurum earned her M.D. from Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine and completed residency training in Internal Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. She did her fellowship training at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and postdoctoral training at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda.

Cleveland Clinic staff are well represented among the 19,000 members of the NAM. Among the many distinguished physicians and scientists elected to the Institute/Academy are: the late Irvine H. Page, M.D., first chair of the Division of Research (1970); the late Bernadine P. Healy, M.D. (1987), former chair of the Lerner Research Institute; George R. Stark, Ph.D. (2002), former chair of the Lerner Research Institute; Cleveland Clinic President and CEO Toby Cosgrove, M.D. (2013); Charis Eng, M.D., Ph.D. (2010), founding chair of the Genomic Medicine Institute and the Center for Personalized Genetic Healthcare; and Stanley L. Hazen, M.D., Ph.D. (2016), chair of Cellular and Molecular Medicine.