Dr. Mary Horowitz, the 2019 recipient of the inaugural AAMDSIF Lifetime Achievement in Science Award is the Robert A. Uihlein, Jr. Chair in Hematologic Research and Professor of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), where she is also an active blood and marrow transplant physician. Her principal national roles are as the Chief Scientific Director of the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR), the Research Director of the C.W. Bill Young Cell Transplantation Program, and the founding director of both the stem cell transplantation Clinical Trials Network and the Genetically Modified Cellular Therapy of Cancer registry. Until recently, she also served as division chief of hematology and medical oncology at MCW.
Dr. Horowitz’s accomplishments in medicine are monumental. She has co-authored more than 350 peer reviewed papers, 35 book chapters and over 10 editorials. She has been invited to give over 50 regional lectures, over 100 national lectures and over 100 international lectures. In the CIBMTR, and its predecessor International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry, and the Bill Young registry she leads what many consider the first and most successful clinical outcomes registries in the world. She has worked diligently to keep grant funded these vital healthcare organizations, which track outcomes for transplants for all bone marrow failure disease patients. Her work with the CTN has done the largest prospective trials for treatment of aplastic anemia with transplantation. Dr. Horowitz’s research work on so many levels has changed the practice of medicine.
All of these achievements are in addition to her considerable local teaching duties. Dr. Horowitz has mentored 16 scholars in residence at MCW. Her most valuable contribution however may be the teaching she gives to medical residents and students at MCW based on her own life events. She has given lectures on the struggle to balance work life and family as a physician. She lectured student on caring for cancer patients while she herself was being treated with chemotherapy for breast cancer and more recently throat cancer. She now teaches about the struggle between being the caregiver for a husband with dementia as she continues her career.
In addition to this AAMDSIF recognition, Dr Horowitz has received the following awards and recognition:
1997 Service Award, U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration
2005 Honorary Fellowship, The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada
2007 Alfredo Pavlovsky Award, XXXI World Congress of the International Society of Hematology
2008 Selected by The Anthony Nolan Trust to give the "Shirley Nolan Memorial Lecture", 7th International Registry Meeting
2008 DKMS Mechtild Harf Award 2010 American Society of Hematology Clinical Research Mentor Award
2014 Lifetime Achievement Award, American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation
2016 14th Annual Thomas L. Smallwood Award for Patient Care Excellence, Froedtert Hospital 2016 The G. Richard Olds Award for Mentorship in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin
Most recently Dr. Horowitz was honored by the American College of Physicians its Harriet Dunstan award for lifetime excellence in contribution to science as related to clinical medicine.