Introducing…Susan M. Barman
Introducing…Luis Gabriel Navar
Introducing…Peter Wagner
Susan M. Barman was elected by the members of the Section Advisory Committee (SAC) to serve a three-year term as Chair of the Committee, effective January 1, 2003. Barman succeeds Celia M. Sladek in this position. SAC is comprised of the Chairs of the 12 APS Section Steering Committees. Barman has recently completed a three-year term as Chair of the Steering Committee of the Central Nervous System (CNS) Section of the APS (1999-2002).
Barman is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Toxico-logy at Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing, MI. She received her doctoral degree in Physiology from Loyola University School of Medicine in Maywood, IL, in February 1976. Her graduate work on spinal cord control of sympathetic nerve activity and regional blood flow was completed under the direction of Dr. Robert D. Wurster. Barman became a member of the APS during her graduate training. Her postdoctoral work was completed in the laboratory of Dr. Gerard L. Gebber in the Department of Pharmacology at MSU. She was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the same department in 1979, and then as an Associate Professor (1984) and Professor (1994).
Barman's collaborative work with Gebber on brainstem control of sympathetic outflow to cardiovascular targets has continued for over 27 years and has resulted in over 90 peer-reviewed publications, many of them in APS journals. Her primary research focus has been an effort to understand the basis for the activity in autonomic nerves that control cardiovascular function. Specifically, she and her colleagues have been pioneers in the use of spike-triggered averaging and coherence analysis to identify brainstem neurons whose naturally occurring discharges are correlated to the cardiac-related and 10-Hz rhythms in sympathetic nerve discharge of cats. Work from her laboratory supports the view that basal sympathetic nerve activity is an emergent property of a network of neurons distributed over a wide region of the brainstem, including the medulla and pons. Recent work has combined neurophysiological and neuropharmacological tools to reveal that excitatory amino acid neurotransmission within the medullary lateral tegmental field is a key factor in mediating baroreceptor reflex control of sympathetic nerve activity and in setting the basal level of sympathetic activity. Her research has been funded with a National Institutes of Health Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award (1995-2005).
Barman's major objective as Chair of SAC will be to lead the 12 Section Chairs in an effort to encourage more APS members, especially young physiologists, to participate in the various Society activities and to take advantage of many of the opportunities offered by the APS. Success in such endeavors would be a step toward fulfillment of some of the goals set forth in the APS 2000 Strategic Plan.
Because the Chair of SAC serves as an ex officio member of the APS Council, SAC is the major link between the general membership and governance of the Society. Barman will work with the Section Chairs to identify ways in which their Steering Committees can better communicate with the APS membership to have them feel more ownership in The Society and to encourage their participation in Society activities. This plan is directed toward the goal of the APS 2000 Strategic Plan to increase membership involvement in the functions of the Society. All APS members are encouraged to become affiliated with one or more of the APS sections organized on the basis of research or academic interests. APS members can assist in the development of programming at Experimental Biology (EB) meetings or serve on an APS committee by working with their section representatives to the Joint Program Committee or Committee-on-Commit-tees, respectively. Moreover, APS members can contact members of the Steering Committees with ideas and questions concerning the APS. The Chairs of the Steering Committees are able to voice these ideas/questions to the APS Council through SAC.
APS Council has generously provided funds to each of the APS Sections that allow young physiologists to attend EB meetings. Together with other funds available to the Sections, many students, fellows, and new investigators have been recipients of these travel awards. A common concern raised at recent SAC meetings is that not enough qualified candidates are applying for these awards. Another one of Barman's goals during her tenure as SAC Chair will be to work with members of SAC to identify ways in which information about these awards reaches eligible candidates and to assure that highly qualified individuals become recipients of the awards. It is hoped that all Sections can benefit from open discussions of techniques that have worked well for some Sections.
One of the most important functions of SAC is to serve as the nominating committee for determining the slate of candidates for APS President-elect and Councillors. Barman will advise SAC members 1) to encourage members of their section to submit names of well-qualified persons in nomination for these positions and 2) to fulfill their responsibility of their December meeting to select from this pool the names of two individuals for President-elect and five for Council. In addition, Barman will encourage SAC members to contact their section membership to encourage them to participate in the final election process.
Another objective of the APS 2000 Strategic Plan is to increase the participation of young physiologists in the functions of the Society. Barman hopes that SAC can help attain this goal by ensuring that a trainee (student or fellow) is appointed to each of the Section Steering Committees. These 12 trainees will be the nucleus of a Trainee Advisory Committee that will be established as a forum for young APS members to be active in the Society and to have their needs be brought to the attention of the APS governance. It is hoped that this committee would work with SAC to achieve their goals.
In addition to her service as Chair of SAC, Barman serves on the Editorial Board of AJP: Heart and Circulatory Physiology and AJP: Regulatory Integrative Physiology, and she reviews for other APS Journals. She is also a member of the APS Career Mentoring Program sponsored by the Women in Physiology. She has been an active participant in section activities and APS committees through service on the CNS Section Steering Committee (1987-91; 1995-2002; Chair, 1999-2002), the Women in Physiology Committee (1996-2001; Chair, 2000-01, and the Joint Program Committee (1996-98). She has also served as a Physiologist-in-Residence at the APS Retreat for High School/Middle School Science Teachers (2001).
To become affiliated with a section, please contact Linda Allen, Membership Services Manager, lallen@the-aps.org. APS members can select one primary affiliation and as many secondary affiliations as fit their interests. For those who are already affiliated with a section and are interested in becoming more involved in sectional activities, you are encouraged to contact Barman or other members of SAC. A list of SAC members and their contact information can be found on the web at: http://www.the aps.org/committees/members/sac.htm. For further information on the twelve Sections, you can link onto their specific web sites from http://www.the aps.org/sect_groups.htm.
On January 1, 2003, Luis Gabriel Navar succeeded Allen Cowley, Jr.
as chair of the Long-Range Planning Com-mittee. Navar is Professor and Chairman
of the Department of Physiology at Tulane University School of Medicine in New
Orleans, LA. A native of El Paso, Texas, he received his B.S. from Texas A&M
University in 1962. He received his PhD in 1966 at the University of Mississippi
under the direction of Arthur Guyton in the Department of Physiology.
He served as a faculty member at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine
until 1974 and was a visiting scientist at Duke University in 1972-73. Navar
joined the faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1974 rising
to Professor of Physiology and Biophysics and Senior Scientist in the Nephrology
Research and Training Center. Navar was appointed as Professor and Chairman
of the Department of Physiology at the Tulane University School of Medicine
in 1988. He is also Co-Director of the Tulane Renal and Hypertension Center
of Excellence and Director of the NIH funded Center of Excellence in Biomedical
Research in Hypertension and Renal Biology.
Research programs in Navar's laboratory investigate hormonal and paracrine mechanisms
regulating renal hemodynamics, glomerular filtration rate (GFR), and sodium
excretion with specific focus on the tubuloglomerular feedback mechanism and
its role in renal autoregulation. Another area of interest regards the intrarenal
mechanisms mediating changes in sodium excretion that occur in response to changes
in arterial pressure, a phenomenon termed “pressure natriuresis.”
Recent studies support a role for intrarenal nitric oxide in mediating arterial
pressure-related changes in sodium excretion. Intense recent activity has been
focused on the pathophysiology of hypertension and altered kidney function in
angiotensin II dependent hypertension. Using an angiotensin II infused model
of hypertension, the role of altered internalization and formation of angiotensin
II in mediating changes in renal function is being evaluated.
Navar has been an active member of the American Physiological Society (APS) since 1966, serving as Councillor (1991-94) and President (1998-99) for the Society and Associate Editor for the American Journal of Physiology: Renal Physiology. Navar is also a member of the IUPS National Organizing Committee for the 2005 IUPS Congress to be held in San Diego. Navar has been active in the American Society of Hypertension, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the American Society of Nephrology, the American Heart Association (AHA) and the Council of Academic Societies of the AAMC. In 1996 he served as President of the Association of Chairs of Departments of Physiology. He has served as Associate Editor for Hypertension, and on peer review groups and study sections for the National Institutes of Health, the VA, and the AHA. He has also been appointed to the Editorial Boards of American Journal of Physiology (Renal Fluid and Electrolyte), Kidney International, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, American Journal of Kidney Diseases, American Journal of Hypertension, Hypertension and Journal of Hypertension.
Navar received the C.W. Gottschalk Distinguished Lectureship Award in 1997 from the American Physiological Society, the Lewis K. Dahl Award (1997) and the Scientific Councils Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Heart Association in 1999. He recently received the Richard Bright Award from the American Society of Hypertension and the Arthur Corcoran Lectureship Award from the High Blood Pressure Council of the AHA in 2001.
Effective January 1, 2003, Peter Wagner succeeded Mordecai Blaustein as chair of the Finance Com-mittee. After high school and university training in Sydney, Australia, Wagner graduated from the University of Sydney in 1968 with a medical degree. After two years of further clinical training, he emigrated to San Diego early in 1970 to become John West’s first UCSD postdoctoral fellow. He has remained at UCSD ever since, joining the faculty ranks in 1973 and moving to full professor in 1984. Since 1999, he has been Chief of the Division of Physiology in the Department of Medicine at UCSD. In addition, since the beginning of 2002, he has been interim chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. He was recently elected to the leadership of the American Thoracic Society and will be its president during its centenary year of 2005.
Wagner has had several roles within the American Physiological Society. Between 1989-91, he was a member of APS Council. He was the longest serving member of any editorial board of the Society’s journals, on the Journal of Applied Physiology board continuously from 1976 until 1996 when he became an associate editor of that Journal. He has continued in that role since. In 2002, he gave the Edward F. Adolph Distinguished Lecture, for the Environmental and Exercise Physiology Section of APS. He has published much of his research in APS journals, in particular, the Journal of Applied Physiology. Of his current total of 266 research papers, 126 or almost 50% are in APS journals.
His research interests focus around the transport of oxygen between the environment and mitochondria. For many years, this focus was directed towards the lung, and he is probably best known for dreaming up the multiple inert gas elimination technique. This is a tool for quantifying the functional distribution of ventilation/perfusion ratios in the lungs, and has had extensive application in many laboratories around the world for 30 years. It continues to be actively used in many centers here and abroad. More recently, he has been involved in research at the level of the skeletal muscle, again in the context of oxygen transport. Here the primary questions relate to understanding the limitations to oxygen efflux from the red cell out of the capillary and its subsequent transport to the muscle mitochondria. This has required incorporating the tools of molecular biology to apply side by side with classical physiological approaches, and in so doing he has begun to focus on the growth factor VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) which appears critical for maintaining muscle capillarity and is probably also essential for adaptive responses (to muscle contraction) in the muscle microcirculation. His work has been continuously supported by a program project from the NIH that is now in its 28th year. He has been PI of this grant for the last 13 years, taking over from Dr. West in 1990.
As incoming chair of the Finance Committee, he will bring an interesting perspective to the American Physiological Society since he serves in a very similar capacity on the Program and Budget Committee of the American Thoracic Society. These two organizations are grossly similar in mission, structure and function, although there is clearly a stronger clinical emphasis in the Thoracic Society. It is interesting that the financial contributions of the major annual meetings of the two societies constitute very different places in their respective financial pictures, as do the journals. Undoubtedly, working with both societies in this manner will allow Wagner to bring fresh ideas to each.
Wagner sees the primary role of the Finance Committee as an oversight function. In this manner, the Committee closely monitors both the income and expenses of the Society on a regular basis. The monitoring of actual dollar flow is compared to that projected during the budget process of the preceding year by the Finance Committee. This allows the Finance Committee to determine variances that require investigation and/or changes in course. In these difficult fiscal times, this oversight activity is more important than ever. However, the Finance Committee has other important responsibilities as well. Thus, it oversees the investment portfolio of the Society’s reserves. The Society has long had professional fund managers, but the Finance Committee has to oversee overall function and monitor financial performance of these investments. Just recently, the Finance Committee selected a new manager for one of its funds to assure the continued best possible performance in these difficult times.
In the course of routine operations, the Finance Committee also develops the ensuing year’s annual budget each fall for approval by APS Council. This is done in close collaboration with the Society’s chief financial officer, Robert Price, and Executive Director, Martin Frank.
Perhaps just as importantly as these oversight duties, the Finance Committee also is involved in more creative efforts such as the never-ending search for ways to both improve the income stream and reduce expenses without cutting programs. In this capacity, the Finance Committee advises Council. Wagner has the opportunity to provide such feedback from the Finance Committee by virtue of his ex officio position on Council.
Wagner sees the financial state of the Society, when viewed from high altitude, as quite comfortable. This is because of the substantial reserves that the Society has built up over its long lifetime. Nevertheless, there has been a trend in recent years for expenses to grow slightly faster than income, and this is requiring the utilization of small, but significant, amounts of financial reserves on an ongoing basis. Wagner subscribes to the notion expressed by Council, that the APS should not eliminate programs in order to amass huge financial reserves, but rather should use its reserves wisely to enhance its programs and support its membership. However, it is also felt that the Society must do everything in its power to reverse the trend of diminishing income and increasing expenses in the coming years. While this is to some extent a product of the current financial environment, Wagner feels it would be inappropriate to hide behind this broader problem thereby taking a passive view. Accordingly, he will work to the best of his ability with APS staff and Council to get the Finance Committee to think of creative ways of enhancing income and reducing expenses. In this way the APS can be of most use to you, its members.
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