2025-27 Edward A. Dickson Emeritus/a Professorship Award Two Recipients Announced

Vice Provost Alldredge awarded the 2025-27 UCSF Edward A. Dickson Emeritus/a Professorship to two UCSF Emeriti professors: John Feiner, MD and Thomas Lang, PhD. Their two-year terms begin July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2027.

The UCSF Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professorship Award honors UCSF emeritus/a professors whose outstanding research, scholarly work, teaching, or public service activities have continued since retirement. The highest priority will be to support activities that benefit the campus and for which funding is not available from other sources. Each award is for a maximum of $20,000 and is made to the Emeritus/a Professor for the upcoming two (2) fiscal years.2025-27 Edward A. Dickson Emeritus/a Professorship Award Recipients

John Feiner, MD
Professor Emeritus
Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care
School of Medicine

• Project Title: Improving Equity in Medical Device Performance
• Summary: Two decades ago, our lab performed carefully controlled human studies showing that pulse oximeters read higher in dark-skinned subjects, which meant the hypoxemia might be underestimated in this population. Widespread hypoxemia and use of pulse oximetry during COVID exposed this issue as a significant clinical problem. The FDA’s will require increased numbers of human subjects in pulse oximeter performance validation studies, and more with darker skin. Capacity for these studies at our lab (https://hypoxialab.com) and the small number of other sites in the US will be insufficient. UCSF has had a long relationship with Uganda through global health initiatives. We are developing a satellite human studies lab there both to both expand the capacity for studies, and more easily find the darkest skinned subject necessary for the development of pulse oximeters that have optimal clinical performance.

Thomas Lang, PhD
Professor Emeritus / Recall Faculty
Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
School of Medicine

• Project Title: Leveraging Clinical CT Scans and AI to Understand the Musculoskeletal Impact of Diseases and Treatments
• Summary:  Bone and muscle loss is secondary to common diseases and therapies, resulting in debilitating bone fractures, muscle weakness and mobility loss. Many musculoskeletal-relevant disease conditions and treatments are clinically monitored using CT scanning, often encompassing fracture-related skeletal sites such as the spine and hip, as well as depots of skeletal muscle and fat that are relevant to physical function and metabolism. To address this opportunity, we have developed Body Composition and Bone – Computed Tomography (BCAB-CT), a software package allowing researchers to evaluate bone density and volumes of muscle and fat tissue from archived clinical CT scans. The goal of the funded project will be to automate BCAB-CT by through use of neural network approaches to identify and segment bone, muscle and fat depots. Success in this project will provide a unique tool for UCSF researchers to carry out large scale imaging studies of bone and muscle health in clinical populations using archived clinical CT images.

For more information, visit the award website or contact Abby Draper.