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. 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.  

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
May 20, 2026 Adrian Cadar, MD, PhD Research in Progress
May 7, 2026 Susan Cheng, MD, MMSc, MPH Harrison Visiting Professor Career Development Roundtable Discussion
April 15, 2026 Ezra Blumenthal, MD, PhD Research in Progress
March 31, 2026 Matthew S. Freiberg MD, MSc Career Development in the Era of Team Science - Pursuing Independent Careers while Navigating Team Science/Collaborations (Young Physician Scientist Series)
March 25, 2026 I-Ling Chiang, MD, MA Research in Progress
March 12, 2026 Kyu Rhee, MD, PhD Harrison Visiting Professor Career Development Roundtable Discussion
February 25, 2026 Yash Choksi, MD Building your lab team: From 1st hires, trainees, and more (Young Physician Scientist Series)
January 23, 2026 Michael R. Savona, MD Taking Discovery Science to Clinical Trials (Young Physician Scientist Series)
January 21, 2026 Nathaniel Berg MD, PhD Research in Progress
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 Research 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

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, 91 honorary memberships have been bestowed on visiting professors; below is a list of guests from 2014-2026.

2025-2026
Kyu Rhee, MD, PhD (Weill Cornell Medicine)
Susan Cheng, MD, MMSc, MPH (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center)
Bradley A. Maron, MD (University of Maryland School of Medicine)

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
Vice Chair for Research, Department of Medicine

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to the Tinsley Randolph Harrison Society

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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