Boonshoft School of Medicine names Jeffrey Travers professor, chair of pharmacology/toxicology

Jeffrey B. Travers will join the Boonshoft School of Medicine as professor and chair, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and professor, Department of Dermatology.

Jeffrey B. Travers, M.D., Ph.D., has been named professor and chair, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and professor, Department of Dermatology, in the Boonshoft School of Medicine effective Feb. 1, 2015.

Travers comes to Wright State from the Indiana University School of Medicine, where he has been a faculty member since 1995. At IU, he held positions in the Departments of Dermatology, Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Pediatrics. He served as residency director for dermatology and director of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Signature Center for Atopic Dermatitis. He was a member of the Institutional Review Committee and the School of Medicine’s Scientific Advisory Council. For nine years he also served as the chair of the Department of Dermatology, before stepping down to refocus on his basic science research in 2010.

His research projects include the pharmacology of bioactive oxidized lipids and the role of fibroblast senescence in non-melanoma skin cancer. He is an expert in atopic dermatitis and currently conducts specialized clinics focusing on the care of the most challenging pediatric and adult patients. Travers also directs a National Institutes of Health (NIH) T32 postdoctoral training grant.

As a physician/scientist, he will provide an additional perspective to his basic science colleagues, as well as clinical study expertise.

Travers plans to continue the strong educational tradition found in the Boonshoft School of Medicine Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and to use his translational research experience to enhance the research component of the department. In particular, the department will open a Pharmacology Translational Unit, which will provide support for translational-based research studies as well as industry clinical trials. Travers will continue to have a limited dermatology practice in the Department of Dermatology, as well as at the Dayton VA Medical Center.

“We are pleased to welcome Dr. Travers to the Boonshoft School of Medicine,” said Dean Marjorie Bowman, M.D. “His leadership philosophy is not only to model and inspire, but also to work with colleagues to help them provide an enabling environment. In his more than nine years as chair of dermatology at IU, he consistently received the highest scores for faculty satisfaction and mentorship.”

Travers earned his M.D. and Ph.D. at The Ohio State University, served his residency in dermatology at the University of Colorado and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in immunodermatology at the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine in Denver.

A native Buckeye, he grew up in Wapakoneta.

Travers has published approximately 200 peer-reviewed research papers, which have been cited nearly 2,000 times. His total funding from the NIH has been more than $7.5 million, and he has received more than $1.3 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for his research. He is currently the principal investigator on three NIH grants.

He holds a Basic Science VA Merit Award and a Clinical VA Merit Award to do research in the initiation of skin cancer, as well as a T32 to train postdoctoral fellows in cutaneous biology/pharmacology. He has regularly participated as a grant reviewer for several different federal research programs and has trained 20 postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. Travers is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and American Dermatological Association honorary societies and currently serves on the Scientific Committee for the American Academy of Dermatology and the Finance Committee for the Society for Investigative Dermatology.