Giving

The Department is proud to announce the Dr Francisco Kerdel Lectureship Fund. The lectureship fund celebrates the legacy of excellence and helps build a bright future in Dermatology.

Dr. Francisco “Pancho” Kerdel is an internationally recognized board-certified dermatologist who has spent over four decades treating patients while also devoting his time to research and education. He graduated from the University of London, St. Thomas’s Hospital in 1979 and completed a dermatology residency at Harvard Medical School, where he was chief resident. Dr. Kerdel was a loved member of our UM Frost Dermatology & Cutaneous Surgery faculty as well as program director, and Founder & Director of Dermatology Inpatient Unit at the University of Miami Hospital (formerly Cedars). Dr. Kerdel also served as the Director and Co-Founder of our Graduate Education Specialty Training Program (GEST) and as President of the International Society of Dermatology. He has played an integral part in the training of many residents, medical students, and fellows.

The fundraising efforts will provide funds to support a lecture series to honor the legacy of Dr Francisco “Pancho” Kerdel. I hope you consider support for this effort.

For more information about contributing to this fundraising effort, please contact Monica Calcines at 305-898-5137 or via email at mcalcines@med.miami.edu

The Department has launched a fundraising effort for an endowment in Pediatric Dermatology to celebrate Chair Emeritus, Dr. Lawrence Schachner’s career and contributions to our department.

Dr. Schachner is best known as the Senior Editor of Schachner & Hansen’s textbook of Pediatric Dermatology, editions I-IV, is past Vice-President of the International Society of Pediatric Dermatology, past President of the Society for Pediatric Dermatology, and past Chair of the AAP Section on Pediatric Dermatology. Further, Dr. Schachner has directed the Masters of Pediatric Dermatology for 30 years, representing 30 years of providing clinicians with the education, information, and tools necessary to provide the best treatment possible to pediatrics, children, and adolescents requiring dermatologic care.

Dr. Lawrence A. Schachner established the Pediatric Dermatology Division in 1978. Since then, he has trained 28 fellows equally distributed to the USA and abroad and impacted the education of many hundreds of pediatricians and dermatologists.

The fundraising efforts aim to create an endowment leading to the Lawrence Schachner Chair in Pediatric Dermatology will recognize his service to his patients and the department, while ensuring his continued legacy through a bright future of pediatric dermatology at UM. I hope you consider support for this effort.

For more information about contributing to the Lawrence Schachner Endowment in Pediatric Dermatology, please contact Brian Weinblatt at 786-203-4712 or via email at brian.weinblatt@miami.edu

In the Department’s long and storied history, one of the most outstanding contributors is Professor David Taplin. Professor Taplin earned an international reputation for excellence in infections disease, infestations, clinical research as well as developing the outstanding Field Epidemiology Survey Team (F.E.S.T.) A generation of medical students, residents, physicians and faculty, had the honor of joining Professor Taplin in the field in areas as diverse as the San Blas of Panama, the military camps of the Colombian army and the battle fields of Vietnam to name a few. We will like you to join us in celebrating the career of Professor David Taplin.

A fundraising effort has been launched by the Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery with the collaboration of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami. It is our hope that sufficient funds can be raised so that an annual lectureship in David’s honor as well as a bench in Professor Taplin’s original laboratory can be named in perpetuity for him and a fund be endowed so that public health students, medical students, and residents can be given the opportunity to work in the field with the ongoing effort of the Field Epidemiology Survey Team (F.E.S.T.). Contributions could be made to both suggested funds.

For more information, please contact Dr. Robert Kirsner at 305-243-6735 or Ms. Monica Calcines at 305-243-4472.

A Tribute to David Taplin

A fundraising effort has been launched by the Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery to honor Dr. Stephen I. Katz. Stephen Katz, M.D., PhD is one of the best known and most influential dermatologist of our time, and it is our hope that sufficient funds can be raised for a research fund in his honor .

Born in New York and growing up in and around Washington, D.C., Steve attended the University of Maryland and Tulane University Medical School. Steve then followed his lifelong hero, older brother Bob who was training in Dermatology at the University of Miami. It was during the times that he visited Bob that Steve fell in love with Dermatology and the Department. Steve trained during a magnificently productive time in the Department’s history and was nurtured by great co-residents and faculty of the time. During the Department’s 50th Anniversary celebration, Steve recounted how Harvey Blank assembled an eventual ‘Who’s Who’ of modern dermatology. Gerry Weinstein, Philip Frost, Bernie Ackerman, Neal Penneys, Bill Eaglstein, Ken Halprin, Vic Witten, Ed Smith, Nardo Zaias, David Taplin, David Pariser were among some of the greats that walked the halls of the University of Miami with Steve at that time. UM Dermatology and his training, with Harvey and the other great faculty and residents of the era, was imprinted on him. Steve was one of the great immune-dermatologists of his generation and his very 1st publication in 1969 was from Miami and a prelude to his famed research interest, “The use of human skin for the detection of antiepithelial autoantibodies: A diagnostic and prognostic test” published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. Full circle, a short 25 years later he was president of the Society of Investigative Dermatology. Of course he did train in Miami and his 3rd publication in the Archives of Dermatology was experimental work on the ‘Relative effectiveness of selected sunscreens’.

Talented and immensely hard working, perhaps Steve’s greatest attribute at Miami, according to Harvey Blank and a hallmark of his entire career, was his ability to make those around him better. An ultimate team player, Steve was always there to lend a hand to a co-resident or faculty member to help get the job done. Part of that talent was Steve’s innate ability to remember people and remember everyone’s name. He was uncanny and made those he met even once feel like he’d never forget them.

After leaving Miami, Steve served in the U.S. military at Walter Reed Army Medical Center completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Royal College of Surgeons of England and obtained a Ph.D. degree in immunology from the University of London in 1974. After becoming Senior Investigator in the Dermatology Branch of the National Cancer Institute and a scientific icon, he became Chief of the Dermatology Branch (a position he held for 24 years) and later served as Director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases for the past 23 years. In these later 2 positions, he not only directed the focus of skin research in the US but was recognized as the face of American Dermatology. This was highlighted exquisitely when he was the Secretary General of the last World Congress of Dermatology in New York.

Similar to his mentor Harvey Blank, and as the ultimate team player, Steve trained and mentored a large number of U.S. and international academic dermatology leaders, who have gone on to become world renowned scientists, Department chairs, Deans and leaders in industry. He will be tremendously missed, and the world is an emptier place without him.

For more information about contributing to the Dr. Stephen I. Katz Research in Dermatology Fund, please contact Dr. Robert Kirsner at 305-243-6735 or Ms. Daisy Bank at 305-243-2042. If you prefer to make your contribution online, please click here.