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69th APS President (1996-1997)
James A. Schafer
(b. 1941)
James A. Schafer was installed as the 69th President of the American
Physiological Society at the close of the Society's Spring Meeting this
month in Washington, DC.
Schafer is a Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at
the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and holds secondary
appointments as a Professor of Medicine and a Senior Scientist in the
Nephrology Research and Training Center. He succeeds Leonard S. Jefferson as
president of the nation's oldest biomedical scientific society.
Schafer was born in 1941 in Buffalo, NY, where he received his education
through high school. He attended the University of Michigan, receiving his
BS in biophysics in 1964 and his PhD in physiology in 1968. He received one
year of postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Erich Heinz at the
Gustav-Embden Center for Biochemistry in Frankfurt, Germany, followed by a
year with Thomas E. Andreoli at Duke University. He moved to UAB with
Andreoli in 1970, taking a position of Assistant Professor in the
Departments of Physiology and Biophysics and Medicine where he has remained
for over 25 years. Schafer was appointed to his present position in 1976.
As a member of the APS since he was a graduate student in 1967, Schafer
has served on the Membership, Program Advisory, Publications, and Long Range
Planning Committees, and was Editor of the American Journal of Physiology:
Renal, Fluid and Electrolyte Physiology from 1983 to 1989. He has also
served on the editorial boards of the AJP:Renal, Fluid, and Electrolyte
Physiology (1980-83), Contemporary Nephrology (1980-85) the Journal of
General Physiology (1981-present), and Kidney International (1990-95).
Schafer has been active in the Renal Section of the APS, serving on the
Steering Committee and as secretary, and in the Epithelial Transport Group,
serving on the Steering Committee and as Chairman. Schafer was elected to a
term on the APS Council from 1992 to 1995 and was elected Resident-Elect
last year. He will also serve as one of the two APS members of the FASEB
Board until 1999.
Schafer has also been involved in the American Society of Nephrology (ASN),
serving on its Publications, Research Advisory, and Program Committees. He
was elected Secretary-Treasurer of the ASN in 1989 and served in that
position and as a member of the ASN Council until 1992. He was a member of
the National Kidney and Urological Diseases Program Evaluation Committee
from 1985 to 1987 and was Chairman of the Research Committee of the National
Kidney and Urological Diseases Advisory Committee from 1987 to 1990.
Schafer has been recognized for his research achievement in the area of
renal epithelial transport and its regulation as the second recipient of the
Robert F. Pitts Memorial Lectureship Award from the International Union of
Physiological Sciences in 1983 and received the Homer W. Smith Award from
the ASN and the New York Affiliate of the American Heart Association in
1993. Last year he was also in the first group of investigators to be
elected to honorary membership in the American Society of Clinical
Investigation and was a corecipient, with Eberhard Schlatter of the
University of Muenster, of the Max-Planck Prize of the Max-Planck Society
and the von Humboldt Foundation of Germany. Among Schafer's other awards are
an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association
(1970-1975), a Wellcome Visiting Professorship at Dartmouth College, an
award from the Mayor of the City of Birmingham, and the UAB President's
Award. Especially important to him are the outstanding teacher awards he has
received from five medical school classes at UAB.
Research in Schafer's laboratory is presently funded by the NIH and the
Max Planck-von Humboldt award and has been funded in the past by the
American Heart Association, the Alabama Kidney Foundation, and the National
Kidney Foundation. His early work focused on the mechanisms of water
transport in the collecting duct and the proximal tubule and their
regulation and more recently on the regulation of ion and water transport in
the collecting duct and the possible implications of altered regulation in
salt-sensitive hypertension.
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