Photo: Colleen Locke
On Tuesday, Dec. 16, the University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees voted to approve the establishment of the Meyers Chair in Geriatric Medicine and the Brudnick Family Chair in Neuropsychiatry and the appointments of David Michael Dosa, MD, MPH, and Andrew Tapper, PhD, as the inaugural recipients of each, respectively.
These endowments were made possible by the generosity of the Meyers Primary Care Institute, Inc. and Mrs. Betty Brudnick of Needham.
The Meyers Chair in Geriatric Medicine will continue the legacy of the Meyers Primary Care Institute by supporting a nationally recognized and board-certified physician-scholar in geriatrics who will work collaboratively to expand research and educational efforts that translate into improvements in age-friendly care locally, regionally and nationally. The Meyers Primary Care Institute, of which UMass Chan was a co-founder, made many contributions to chronic disease epidemiology, medication safety and geriatric care over 25 years, honoring the memory of respected physician-leader John Meyers, MD.
Dr. Dosa, professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine, received his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and medical degree from George Washington University. In 2003, he completed a fellowship in geriatrics and earned a master’s degree in public health at the University of Pittsburgh. A member of the faculty at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School for more than 20 years, he distinguished himself as an expert academic geriatrician and health services researcher. While at Brown, Dosa received a New Investigator Award from the American Geriatrics Society and a National Career Development Award from the Veteran’s Administration, and was a principal investigator on multiple grant awards from the National Institute of Aging and the VA. He has authored more than 110 peer-reviewed publications, multiple book chapters, and the 2010 New York Times bestselling book, “Making the Rounds with Oscar,” about dementia care that has been translated into more than 20 languages.
Dosa joined UMass Chan in 2024 as professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine. He is leading a critically important service for UMass Chan’s primary clinical partner, UMass Memorial Health, and the research and teaching efforts of a division with strategic relevance for UMass Chan’s future MD graduates. Dosa also serves as an attending physician at the VA Central Western Massachusetts Health Care System, where he conducts home visits for veterans around Central Massachusetts.
The Brudnick Family Chair in Neuropsychiatry has been established to support the research efforts of the director of the Brudnick Neuropsychiatric Research Institute. As the institute’s director since 2012, Dr. Tapper is a leading investigator on the neurological basis of addiction, reward and anxiety. Using modern basic neuroscience approaches, his research has helped uncover novel molecular mechanisms underlying the rewarding properties of nicotine and alcohol; elucidated brain areas, circuits and molecular components critical for nicotine withdrawal symptoms; and identified sub-populations of neurons in the brain that drive stress coping behaviors that reduce anxiety.
Tapper received his undergraduate and master’s degrees in biochemistry from the University of California at Riverside and his doctorate in pharmacology from Vanderbilt University. He completed his postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology.
Tapper joined UMass Chan and the Brudnick Neuropsychiatric Research Institute in 2006 as assistant professor of psychiatry. In 2012, he became an associate professor and interim director of the institute. Promoted to full professor in 2016, he joined the Department of Neurobiology and was named permanent director of the Brudnick Institute in 2017.
A sought-after mentor in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Tapper has trained multiple graduate students. In addition, he has advised many postdocs and junior faculty over almost 20 years at UMass Chan.
This most recent gift reflects the Brudnick family’s philanthropic vision and support of UMass Chan which began in 1997 with the establishment of the Brudnick Neuropsychiatric Research Institute by Mrs. Brudnick and her late husband, Irving Brudnick. Dedicated to the comprehensive study of the brain and behavior, the institute provides affiliated faculty with state-of-the-art laboratories for investigating the nature and causes of mental illness with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic strategies for treating a range of neuropsychiatric conditions. This new chair is the second endowed chair the Brudnick family has established at UMass Chan, with the first being the Irving S. and Betty Brudnick Chair in Psychiatry, held by Anthony J. Rothschild, MD
