Dear faculty, staff and students,
On behalf of the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, I want to thank Walter Boron, MD, PhD, for his dedicated service and leadership as chair of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, and to share that he has stepped down from that role. Walter’s contributions to the field and department have been invaluable as recognized as a Distinguished University Professor (2020). I am grateful he will continue his renowned research in acid-base balance and pH regulation at the university as the David N. and Inez Myers/Antonio Scarpa Professor.
Over his remarkable 17-year tenure as chair, Walter led transformative advancements. Under his leadership, the department established two core facilities and an extensive renovation and infrastructure expansion. Walter created the first in the country Master of Science in Medical Physiology program based on his pivotal textbooks Medical Physiology and Concise Medical Physiology co-edited with Emile Boulpaep, considered cornerstone references for the field.
He also shepherded the creation of the Master of Science in Aerospace Physiology and the corresponding certificate program both launched in 2018. This initiative is designed to meet the great need for trained personnel, with curriculum developed by Lisa Damato, PhD, with Walter’s guidance. Lisa Damato and Michael Decker, PhD, co-directors of the aerospace research and education programs, are also members of a NATO science and technology team. Together, they maintain a well-funded research portfolio with NASA, the US Department of Defense, and multiple NATO colleagues throughout Europe. All of this resulted from Walter's vision to anticipate and respond to the rapidly growing needs of the aerospace industry.
Under Walter’s leadership, the department grew to 57 faculty members, including 23 primary, 17 secondary, 5 adjunct appointees, and 6 emeritus professors. Walter recruited 15 world-class tenured or tenure-track faculty, including Sudha Chakrapani, PhD, now chair of the Department of Pharmacology, Lisa, Michael, Xin Qi and Julian Stelzer. The department serves as a research and training center for its 22 postdoctoral fellows and scholars, 11 PhD research staff and 25 PhD students.
Investigating problems of pH regulation in the kidney, central nervous system and gastrointestinal tract, Walter has made numerous seminal contributions to pH research. He initiated an entirely new realm of research involving the transport of biologically important gases by integral membrane proteins, known as “gas channels.” The Boron lab developed the first practical blocker of an aquaporin, a class of water-channel proteins.
Walter developed his lifelong interest in acid-base transport and intracellular-pH (pHi) regulation during his PhD studies with Albert Roos, Paul De Weer and John Russell, and his interest in renal HCO3− transport with postdoctoral mentor Emile Boulpaep. His lab currently focuses on three related areas: the molecular physiology of the Na+-coupled HCO3− transporters, RPTPg and RPTPz, as well as CO2 and O2 channels.
His many accolades include induction into the National Academy of Sciences, an honorary doctorate from Aarhus University and being named a fellow of the American Physiological Society. Walter will receive the 2025 Christian Bohr Prize from the Scandinavian Physiological Society this September at the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS) Congress. He has published more than 230 original papers with an impact factor of 85 and over 300 citations, including many in Nature.
Walter’s many leadership roles include chairing the IUPS Publications Committee and previously serving as president of the American Physiological Society, secretary-general of the International Union of Physiological Sciences and as editor-in-chief of two journals, Physiological Reviews and Physiology.
Walter joined Yale University as a postdoctoral fellow with Boulpaep in 1978, and remained there for the next 29 years, serving three terms as chair of the Department of Cellular & Molecular Physiology. In 2007, he returned to his hometown to chair the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine.
I look forward to continuing to celebrate Walter’s many research and career accomplishments. A separate announcement regarding the interim chair, Xin Qi, Jeanette M. and Joseph S. Silber Professor of Brain Sciences, will be shared shortly.
Stan Gerson, MD
Dean, CWRU School of Medicine
Director, National Center for Regenerative Med