AAAAI Foundation and Allen P. Kaplan, MD FAAAAI Lectureship: Creating Knowledge for Our Future
 

The AAAAI Foundation is pleased to honor the life work of Dr. Allen P. Kaplan with the creation of the Allen P. Kaplan, MD FAAAAI Lectureship: Creating Knowledge for Our Future. Throughout his long career, Dr. Kaplan has made an important mark on the Allergy/Immunology specialty through his work as a physician scientist and as a beloved mentor to many in our field.

Dr. Kaplan is clinical professor of medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, South Carolina and has been associated with the Division of Pulmonary Medicine and Allergy and Immunology for the past 21 years. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Downstate Medical School in Brooklyn, New York, and completed his specialty training in allergy and clinical immunology at Harvard Medical School, and his rheumatology training at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Kaplan served as the head of allergic diseases at the National Institutes of Health, and then chairman of the Department of Medicine and director of the Division of Allergy, Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Dr. Kaplan has contributed significantly to the future of his beloved specialty through the countless fellows and trainees who have learned under his tutelage at Stony Brook as well as pulmonologists at MUSC.

Dr. Kaplan has served at the highest levels of leadership within the specialty. He held the office of President of the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology in 1989, served as the President of the Clinical Immunology Society in 1990 and became the second American to lead the World Allergy Organization during his time as President from 2000 to 2003. Dr. Kaplan has authored more than 350 articles, monographs, and editorials, and he edited the textbook titled Allergy, which has been utilized in training programs throughout the world. In addition, he coedited the textbook titled Urticaria and Angioedema as well as a two-volume textbook titled Allergy and Allergic Diseases. Dr. Kaplan’s research interests focus on inflammatory mechanisms of allergic disease and he is a world-renowned authority on the mechanisms and treatment of urticaria and angioedema.

2020 marks the 2nd year of the AAAAI Foundation and Allen P. Kaplan, MD, FAAAAI Lectureship: Creating Knowledge for Our Future.

James E. Gern MD FAAAAI

Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison

James E. Gern MD FAAAAI is a Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. Dr. Gern graduated with a BS in Chemistry from the University of Florida in 1978, and an MD degree from the University of South Florida in 1981. He completed pediatrics training at the State University of New York in Syracuse and at Tufts University in Boston. After serving as a general pediatrician in the US Navy for three years, he completed an Allergy/Immunology Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in 1992, and then joined the faculty at the UW-Madison.  He is currently the Chief of the Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology Division, and the Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Pediatrics.

Dr. Gern’s research focuses on identifying how viral respiratory infections and other environmental and host factors promote the development of childhood asthma and acute exacerbations of asthma. To accomplish this goal, he has led birth cohort studies in a variety of different environments including disadvantaged urban neighborhoods, farm country, and suburban neighborhoods. These NIH-funded studies include the Wisconsin Infant Study Cohort (WISC) in Central Wisconsin, the Urban Environment and Childhood Asthma birth cohort study in four US urban neighborhoods, and he has helped to design a new cohort ("CANOE") that will evaluate airway epithelial cell development in urban and suburban populations in four US cities. He is also the PI of the Children’s Respiratory Research and the Environment Workgroup (CREW), which is part of the NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program. CREW is a collaborative study involving pooled data from 12 US birth cohorts to identify environmental exposures that promote childhood asthma. These observational studies are complemented by mechanistic studies of interactions between rhinoviruses and airway bacteria that promote acute illnesses.