Ninety-Three Students Become Physicians at School of Medicine Commencement

Renowned cancer and immunology researcher, NEJM editor delivers 2011 commencement address

Ninety-three students, members of the MU School of Medicine Class of 2011, officially became physicians during a commencement ceremony Saturday, May 14, in Jesse Auditorium. Dan Longo, MD, a 1975 cum laude graduate of the MU School of Medicine, delivered the commencement address. He is a deputy editor for the New England Journal of Medicine, senior physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and an investigator and former scientific director for the National Institute on Aging.

Longo

More than 40 percent of this year's medical school graduating class will stay in Missouri to complete residency training, and 30 percent will stay on campus to complete residencies. The 2011 graduates will join more than 7,700 MU physician alumni who advance medical care, education and research throughout the world.

Longo completed specialty training in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He continued training in medical oncology and hematology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and completed postdoctoral research training in the Laboratory of Immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Longo became a senior investigator at the NCI in 1980 and directed its Biological Response Modifiers Program for 11 years. He was scientific director at the National Institute on Aging from 1995 to 2010. He also served 29 years with the U.S. Public Health Service, retiring in 2006 as an assistant surgeon general. Last year, he became a deputy editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and senior physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Longo is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, and a Master of the American College of Physicians. He serves as an editor for Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, and Cancer Chemotherapy and Biotherapy: Principles and Practices. MU's medical school has presented him with the Outstanding Young Physician Award and the school's highest honor, the Citation of Merit. He also received the University of Missouri Curators' Award.

In separate graduation ceremonies in May 2011, 32 MU School of Medicine students received doctorates or master's degrees in biochemistry, health management and informatics, medical pharmacology and physiology, molecular microbiology and immunology, and nutrition and exercise physiology.