Michael R. DeBaun, MD, MPH, the J.C. Peterson, MD, Professor of Pediatrics and founder and director of the Vanderbilt-Meharry Sickle Cell Disease Center of Excellence, is among three Vanderbilt University faculty members elected this year to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The others are Edward Rubin, JD, University Distinguished Professor of Law and Political Science, and Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting, PhD, the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies and French.
Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence from “every field of human endeavor.” This year, 247 members were elected from the mathematical, physical, biological, social and behavioral sciences, humanities, the arts, leadership, policy and communications.
DeBaun is among eight members of the academy’s medical sciences section elected in 2025.
He joins a distinguished membership of leaders, innovators and artists spanning the history of the United States, and which includes John Adams, Jonas Salk, Martin Luther King Jr., Jacob Lawrence and Toni Morrison, and international honorary members, among them Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Nelson Mandela.
“Becoming an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an unexpected honor and tribute to the 30-plus years of teamwork in the laboratory and the 40-plus years of partnership with my spouse and best friend, Sandra Rose DeBaun,” DeBaun said.
“I am grateful to the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine leadership for providing me with the unique opportunity to initiate and lead a center of excellence, coupled with the philanthropic support while at Vanderbilt, that has provided unique opportunities to advance the care for children and adults with sickle cell disease,” he said.
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited disorder that results in abnormal hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying molecule in red blood cells. Cells with abnormal hemoglobin adopt a sickle shape and tend to clump together easily, leading to severe pain and strokes, damage to the heart, lungs and kidneys, and shorter lifespans compared to the general population.
The academy’s citation noted that DeBaun’s research “has led to fundamental changes in understanding the clinical epidemiology, pathogenesis, and treatment of strokes and silent strokes in children and adults with sickle cell disease.”
DeBaun has led eight controlled clinical trials funded by foundations and the National Institutes of Health aimed at preventing strokes in children and adults with SCD in North America, Europe and Nigeria. He was the primary physician author of the Sickle Cell Treatment Act, signed into law in 2004, which created regional networks for enhanced services for people with SCD.
His contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including election to the National Academy of Medicine in 2009, the 2014 Ernest Beutler Lecture and Prize in Clinical Science from the American Society of Hematology, and international mentoring awards from the Society for Pediatric Research in 2017 and the American Society of Hematology in 2019.
DeBaun earned his MD and MS in Health Services Research from Stanford University School of Medicine. He completed his pediatric residency and chief residency at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and his fellowship in pediatric hematology-oncology at Washington University School of Medicine.
He also completed a four-year United States Public Health Service epidemiology fellowship at the NIH, during which he obtained an MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
A member of the Vanderbilt faculty since 2010, DeBaun was the co-lead of an international trial demonstrating successful curative therapy in children and adults with SCD. The results of this trial were validated in another recently published trial where he was one of the four co-chairs.
DeBaun is one of two current American Academy of Arts and Sciences members from Vanderbilt with a primary appointment in the School of Medicine. The other is Nancy Carrasco, MD, the Joe C. Davis Professor of Biomedical Science and chair of the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, who was elected in 2022.
New members will be formally inducted into the academy Oct. 11 during a ceremony at the academy headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
