Mercer, Ko named to Mayfield positions

By Darla Brown and Wendy Mohon

 

Two faculty members at the Medical School recently have been named to endowed positions established by Development Board member Jack Mayfield Jr.

David Mercer, M.D., is the holder of the Jack H. Mayfield, M.D. Chair in Surgery and Tien Ko, M.D., is the holder of the Jack H. Mayfield, M.D., Distinguished Professorship in Surgery.

Mayfield created three endowed positions in honor of his late father, including the Jack H. Mayfield, M.D., Distinguished University Chair in Surgery, which is held by the chair of the Department of Surgery, Richard Andrassy, M.D.

Dr. Andrassy says the three endowments will supplement research that, in turn, can attract grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He also notes that endowments allow faculty more freedom to not only teach but also to learn.

Certainly the Jack H. Mayfield Chair facilitates our mission and enables us to embark upon novel avenues of discovery that ordinarily might not be possible in light of recent changes in NIH funding and declining reimbursements.
– Dr. David Mercer

“The future of academic medicine will most likely be directly tied to endowments supporting the Medical School faculty. NIH funds are harder to get, state dollars have decreased, and reimbursement for clinical work has decreased,” Dr. Andrassy says. “Time spent on academic endeavors, research, and teaching are frequently inadequately funded or not funded. Endowments allow some time away from clinical work to pursue scholarly activities.”

Dr. Mercer is vice chair of the Department of Surgery and chief of general surgery and trauma and critical care. He joined the faculty of the Medical School in 1993, and received his M.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School. He completed postgraduate training at Temple University Hospital Philadelphia, including two residencies, an internship, and a research laboratory fellowship. He also completed a fellowship at the Pediatric Heart Institute of St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.

He says it is “an honor and a privilege” to be named holder of the Jack H. Mayfield, M.D. Chair in Surgery.

“The Department of Surgery at UT Houston has been fortunate to have endowed chairs to support the leaders of the department and their mission to educate the next generation of physicians and physician scientists; to train our future surgeons; to provide state-of-the-art care to our patients who suffer from surgical disease; and to generate new knowledge and innovations such that translation of these discoveries results in improved outcomes,” he says. “Certainly the Jack H. Mayfield Chair facilitates our mission and enables us to embark upon novel avenues of discovery that ordinarily might not be possible in light of recent changes in NIH funding and declining reimbursements. For me personally, the chair allows funding of junior faculty and residents to support their involvement in both clinical and basic research by diminishing, at least in part, the expenses associated with participation in such activities.”

Dr. Ko is vice chair of the Department of Surgery for the Harris County Hospital District and is chief of surgery at LBJ Hospital. He received his M.D. from the University of California School of Medicine and completed an internship and residency at Loyola University Medical Center in Illinois. He completed a research fellowship at The University of Texas Medical Branch and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. He joined the Medical School in 2007.