The Tinsley Randolph Harrison Society

Lifetime support for physician-scientists

Named for the great teacher and clinical researcher, Tinsley Randolph Harrison, MD, who came to Vanderbilt in 1925 as the first chief resident in Medicine, the Harrison Society is dedicated to the preservation of science in clinical medicine and to the scientific literacy of physicians who use this knowledge at the bedside.

Participants in the Physician-Scientist Training Program will become lifetime members of the Tinsley Randolph Harrison Society.

The goals of the Harrison Society are to:

Promote medical research relevant to internal medicine as a career discipline
Benefit and aids the education, research, and patient care missions of its members by holding forums and meetings and publishing appropriate educational materials approved by its members
Support new initiatives in education, biomedical research, and patient care for the benefit of physicians who practice internal medicine

Play the video to learn more about the Harrison Society.

Membership in the Harrison Society

Harrison Society scholars: Participants in the Physician-Scientist Training Program become life-long members of the Harrison Society.

Student members: Participants in the Vanderbilt Medical Scientist Training Program (MD/PhD) who are pursuing Internal Medicine residency training qualify for membership in this category during their last year of medical school.

Honorary members: Honorary membership in the Harrison Society will be bestowed on visiting professors.

Activities and Meetings 

Visiting Professorships:  Members convene three times per year during visits by distinguished physician-scientists invited to Vanderbilt University Medical Center by the Harrison Society.

Harrison Society Seminar Series: The Society hosts a monthly meeting for current scholars, faculty alumni, and invited special guests. Diverse programming includes invited lecturers, research-in-progress presentations, and career development panel discussions. This forum is designed to foster rich peer-to-peer and near-peer mentoring and networking, a primary goal of Society activities.

2025	2024	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019
Natalie Bennett, MD, PhD	Raphael Crum, MD, PhD	Tina Arkee, MD, PhD	Nathan Berg, MD, PhD	Adrian Cadar, MD, PhD	Robert Corty, MD, PhD	Melissa Bloodworth, MD, PhD
James Brundage, MD	Jacob Files, MD, PhD	Whitney Barham, MD, PhD	Ezra Blumenthal, MD, PhD	John Li, MD, PhD	Michael Davidson, MD, PhD	Nathan Bloodworth, MD, PhD
Olga Golubeva, MD, PhD	Lizzy Goldberg, MD	Jake Bourgeois, MD, PhD, MSPH	I-Ling Chiang, MD, MA	Alexander Linsalata, MD, PhD	Beau Hilton, MD	Matthew Stier, MD, PhD
Alana Jones, MD, PhD	Katelyn McKenzie MD, PhD	Rachel Brown, MD, PhD	Akito Eguchi, MD, PhD	Richard Merkhorfer, Jr, MD, PhD	Paul Lindau, MD, PhD	Shannon Stockton, MD
Briaunna Minor, MD, PhD		Nike Izmaylov, PhD	Rafi Fernandez, MD, PhD	Alan Perez-Rathke, MD, PhD	Matthew Villaume, MD, PhD
Katrina Piemonte, MD, PhD		Michael Mchenry, MD, PhD		Chelsie Sievers, MD, PhD
Andrea Toth, MD, PhD		Jacob Pruett, MD, PhD		Jeff Singer, MD, PhD

The Harrison Society Seminar Series is a monthly meeting of Harrison scholars and alumni. The format alternates between career development panel discussions and fellow research-in-progress presentations. Seminars are held in-person primarily on Thursdays from noon to 1 p.m. unless otherwise noted. See a sampling of past presentations below.

Date	Presenter	Topic
Dec. 3, 2025	Justin Lo, MD, PhD and Fabian Bock, MD, PhD	Diversifying Funding Beyond the NIH Panel Discussion, Adele White and Sue Reeves (Foundation Relations)
Nov. 12, 2025	Evan Brittain, MD, MSCI	Harrison Society Vision and Updates/Q&A
Oct. 30, 2025	Bradley Maron, MD	Harrison Visiting Professor Career Development Roundtable Discussion
Oct. 02, 2025	Don Evans and Bob Brown, PhD	Research Careers in Industry: Insights from Pharmaceutical Veterans Panel Discussion
Aug. 13, 2025	Patrick J. Hu, MD, PhD	State of the Harrison Society
July 17, 2025	Alan Perez Rathke, MD, PhD	Research in Progress
June 12, 2025	Jeffrey Singer, MD, PhD	Research in Progress
May 15, 2025	Michael Davidson, MD	Research in Progress
May 8, 2025	Vijay Sankaran, MD, PhD	Harrison Visiting Professor Career Development Roundtable Discussion
April 17, 2025	Richard Merkhofer, MD, PhD	Reserach in Progress
Mar. 20, 2025	Chelsie Sievers, MD, PhD	Research in Progress
Mar. 6, 2025	Dale Abel, MD, PhD	Harrison Visiting Professor Career Development Roundtable Discussion
Feb. 25, 2025	Alex Linsalata, MD, PhD	Research in Progress
Jan. 23, 2025	Stokes Peebles, MD	Maximizing Your Research through the VA
Nov. 21, 2024	Yash Choksi, MD, April Barnado, MD, MSCI, and Katherine Cahill, MD	Launching and Sustaining an Independent Research Program Panel Discussion
Oct. 31, 2024	Jil Tardiff, MD, PhD	Harrison Visiting Professor Career Development Roundtable Discussion
Sept. 19, 2024	Dr. Mike Stein	Reviewing Grants
Aug. 15, 2024	Beau Hilton, MD, PhD	Research in Progress
July 18, 2024	Paul Lindau, MD, PhD	Research in Progress

The Society hosts three visiting professorships a year. The visiting professors are outstanding physician-scientist role models who are invited to VUMC to give the Riven Lecture at the Department of Medicine Grand Rounds. Visiting professors are also honored at a Harrison Society luncheon where our scholars have an opportunity to engage with our esteemed guests.
Since the Harrison Society was founded, 85 honorary memberships have been bestowed on visiting professors; below is a list of guests from 2012-2025.

2024-2025
Evan Dale Abel (University of California Los Angeles)
Jil Tardiff (The University of Arizona)
Vijay G. Sankaran (Harvard Medical School)

2023-2024
Muneesh Tewari (University of Michigan)
Kieren Marr (Johns Hopkins University)
Anna Greka (Harvard Medical School)

2022-2023 
Ross Levine (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) 
Katrina Armstrong (Columbia University) 
Sohail Tavazoie (The Rockefeller University)

2021-2022 
Mary Armanios (Johns Hopkins University)  
John Carethers (University of Michigan Medical School) 
Daniel Drucker (Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Ontario)

2020-2021 
Domenico Accili (Columbia University)  
Norman E. "Ned" Sharpless (National Institutes of Health) 
Ana Maria Cuervo (Albert Einstein College of Medicine) 
Sekar "Sek" Kathiresan (Co-Founder and CEO; Verve Therapeutics) 
 
2019-2020 
Seung Kim (Stanford University) 
Mark Ginsberg (University of California, San Diego) 
Jedd Wolchok (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) 
 
2018-2019 
Vincent Yang (Stony Brook University) 
Mone Zaidi (Mount Sinai School of Medicine) 
Serpil Erzurum (Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic) 
Martin Myers (University of Michigan Medical School) 

2017-2018 
Cornelia Weyand (Stanford University) 
Peter Arvan (University of Michigan Medical School) 
Michael Parmacek (University of Pennsylvania) 
Gregg Semenza (2019 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine; Johns Hopkins University) 

2016-2017 
Marc Pfeffer (Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School) 
Ronald Falk (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) 
David Relman (Stanford University) 
Nancy Lane (University of California, Davis Health System) 

2015-2016 
Raymond DuBois (The Biodesign Institute, ASU) 
Roy Zent (Vanderbilt University) 
Paul Rothman (Johns Hopkins University) 
Jean Schaffer (Washington University in St. Louis) 

2014-2015 
Edward Benz (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School) 
Howard Rockman (Duke University) 
Joseph Bonventre (Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School) 
Eric Fearon (University of Michigan Medical School)

Harrison Society Officers

Anna Hemnes, MD

Chair, Department of Medicine
Professor of Medicine, Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
Physician-in-Chief, Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital

Evan Brittain, MD, MSCI

Professor of Medicine, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine
Director, Physician-Scientist Training Program/Tinsley Randolph Harrison Society
Assistant Dean for Physician Researcher Training

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Your generosity to The Tinsley Randolph Harrison Society, named for Vanderbilt's first chief resident in Medicine, helps provides support to residents in the Physician-Scientist Training Program as they pursue clinical and basic research.

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The Tinsley Randolph Harrison Society

Lifetime support for physician-scientists

Membership in the Harrison Society

Activities and Meetings

Harrison Society Officers

Anna Hemnes, MD

Evan Brittain, MD, MSCI

Donate

to the Tinsley Randolph Harrison Society

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The Tinsley Randolph Harrison Society

Lifetime support for physician-scientists

Membership in the Harrison Society

Activities and Meetings

Harrison Society Trainees and Recent Alumni

Harrison Society Seminar Series

Harrison Society Visiting Professors

Harrison Society Officers

Anna Hemnes, MD

Evan Brittain, MD, MSCI

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to the Tinsley Randolph Harrison Society

Activities and Meetings 