Dr. Daniel K. Podolsky is the president of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He became the institution’s third president on September 1, 2008. He is also a professor of internal medicine and a gastroenterologist.
Career
Podolsky spent most of his earlier career in Boston. He joined the Harvard Medical School faculty and the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital in 1981, became chief of gastroenterology at Mass General in 1989, and was named Mallinckrodt Professor of Medicine at Harvard in 1998. He also served as chief academic officer of Partners HealthCare System. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and earned his M.D. at Harvard Medical School.
His research has focused on how the cells lining the intestine work and their role in inflammatory bowel disease. He has written more than 300 research and review articles, served as editor-in-chief of the journal Gastroenterology and as president of the American Gastroenterological Association, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
He has trained more than 70 gastroenterology fellows and more than 100 postdoctoral scholars. The American Gastroenterological Association gave him its Distinguished Achievement Award in 2007 and its Julius Friedenwald Medal in 2009. At UT Southwestern he holds the Philip O’Bryan Montgomery, Jr., M.D. Distinguished Presidential Chair in Academic Administration.
At UT Southwestern
UT Southwestern has grown substantially during his tenure. Two of its faculty members won Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine, Bruce Beutler in 2011 and Thomas Südhof in 2013. The Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center earned the National Cancer Institute’s comprehensive designation, and the William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital opened in late 2014.
The medical center also created the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute and formed Southwestern Health Resources, a clinically integrated network with Texas Health Resources. According to UT Southwestern, more than 1,400 faculty appointments were made during his presidency.
New departments created during his tenure include biophysics, emergency medicine and the Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics. Major gifts included $100 million from former Texas Gov. William P. Clements Jr. in 2009 and $36 million from the O’Donnell Foundation for the brain institute.
Recognition
Podolsky was named to D CEO’s 2027 Dallas 500 in the healthcare executives category.