Ferid Murad, MD, PhD
Honorary Chairman
Dr. Ferid Murad, MD, PhD is the Albanian American Medical Society's Honorary Chairman and a 1998 Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology. He is a University Professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., teaching a course for undergraduates, mentoring graduates and medical students and leading a lab program in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Dr. Murad completed his undergraduate work at DePaw University and received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Case Western University. He completed his medical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellowship at NIH in the Heart Institute. He was on the faculty of the University of Virginia 1970-81 as Director of the Clinical Research Center and Director of Division of Clinical Pharmacology with appointments in Medicine and Pharmacology.
He was chief of Medicine at Palo Alto Veterans Hospital 1981-1988, Associate Chairman of Medicine 1982-86 and Chairman of Medicine 1986-88 at Stanford University. He was Vice President of Research and Development at Abbott Laboratories 1988-93 and Professor at Northwestern University. Dr. Murad has been active in both academic medicine and industry throughout his distinguished career. He has founded or co-founded five biotechnology companies and has advised many cities and government leaders about technology development. His work has concentrated on the field of cell signaling and signal transduction systems.
In 1998, Dr. Murad received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on nitric oxide- a colorless, odorless gas that signals blood vessels to relax and widen, which in turn lowers blood pressure. He continues to do research that leads to a better understanding of how information is transmitted between cells.
Among his many other awards and honors, Dr. Murad received the prestigious Albert and Mary Lasker Basic Medical Research award in 1996, the American Heart Association Ciba Award 1998, and the Baxter Award for Distinguished Research in the biomedical sciences from the Association of the American Medical College in 2000. He also received the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology Distinguished Research prize in 2005 and the President’s Scholar Award from the University of Texas-Houston Health Science Center in 2006.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, member of Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science Technology. He is also a member of several foreign academies and is an Honorary or Adjunct Professor at a number of universities.
Dr. Murad also serves on the Board of Directors or Scientific Advisory Boards on a number of public and private companies and various foundations and universities. About 140 trainees have worked with him in his laboratories who are currently academic or pharmaceutical industry leaders around the world.
Dr. Murad’s research with cell signaling focuses on the nitric oxide/cyclic GMP pathways to identify novel molecular pathways and targets that can lead to the discovery and development of novel therapeutic agents. His laboratory in the IMM is typically 18 to 20 scientists. He also has a similar sized laboratory at the Shanghai University examining the effects of traditional Chinese medicines on the no/cGMP pathways.