by Bill Snyder
Thomas Wang, MD, director of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, has been appointed chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, effective February 2020.
Wang, the Gottlieb C. Friesinger II Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, succeeds David Johnson, MD, former deputy director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, who has chaired the department at UT Southwestern since 2010.
“This was not an easy decision,” Wang said during today’s early-morning meeting of Cardiovascular Medicine faculty and fellows. The years since 2013, when he came to Vanderbilt from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, “have been more gratifying than I could have ever imagined,” he said.
“This division is exceptional, with a lot of fantastic leaders,” said Wang, who also is physician-in-chief of the Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute. “I think it is one of the best all-around cardiology divisions in the country.”
Nancy Brown, MD, chair of the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt, said she was disappointed to be losing Wang, who she called a “natural leader,” but she was also pleased for him.
“If you look around this room at each other,” she told the faculty and fellows, “it’s quite a tribute to Tommy’s leadership … It should also give you a sense of hope about the future. It is incumbent on everybody in this room to continue the vision forward, to build on what Tommy has built.”
A 1996 graduate of Harvard Medical School, Wang directed the heart failure disease management program and was associate director of the heart failure/transplantation section at Massachusetts General Hospital before coming to Vanderbilt.
A member of the Association of American Physicians and the American Society of Clinical Investigation, he is the current president of the Association of Professors of Cardiology.
Brown indicated that the search for new leadership of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine to succeed Wang would begin promptly.
