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Larry R. Kaiser, M.D., became the fifth President of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, UT System’s most comprehensive academic health science center, August 1, 2008. He succeeded James T. Willerson, M.D., now President of the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital.
The UT Health Science Center at Houston comprises six schools — medicine, nursing, dentistry, public health, health information sciences, and biomedical sciences, as well as The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases, the Health Policy Institute and the UT Harris County Psychiatric Center. The health science center has more than 3,775 students, 1,322 faculty, 3,115 staff and a 2007 operating budget of $725.3 million. In the same year, the health science center provided $126.8 million in un-reimbursed patient care to medically and financially indigent citizens of Harris County. The UT Health Science Center at Houston has a $2.2 billion annual indirect economic impact on the Houston metropolitan region.
Dr. Kaiser came to the UT Health Science Center from the University of Pennsylvania Health System, where he was the Surgeon-in-Chief, the John Rhea Barton Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery. The department has 10 divisions and 162 faculty members.
Dr. Kaiser is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and member of every major surgical society including the American Surgical Association, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the Society of Clinical Surgery, the Fleischner Society, the Halsted Society, and the Society of University Surgeons He has served or currently serves on the editorial board of the Annals of Surgery, Contemporary Surgery, ACS Surgery, Annals of Surgical Oncology, and the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. In 2005, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science.
After earning his M.D. degree from Tulane University, Dr. Kaiser took his internship and residency in surgery at the University of California at Los Angeles between 1977 and 1983. He completed his education in Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at the University of Toronto serving as Senior Resident in Thoracic Surgery in 1985. He joined the faculty on the Thoracic Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center immediately following the completion of his residency. In 1988 he was recruited to Washington University School of Medicine, to join his mentor, Dr. Joel Cooper, where he ultimately rose to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure in 1990. Dr. Kaiser came to Penn in 1991 as Associate Professor of Surgery, Chief of General Thoracic Surgery, founder and Director of the Lung Transplantation Program, and Director of the Center for Lung Cancer and Related Disorders.
In collaboration with Dr. Steven Albelda of the Penn Department of Medicine, Dr. Kaiser co-directed the Thoracic Oncology Research Laboratory. His areas of interest include lung cancer, malignant mesothelioma, and mediastinal tumors. He served as principal investigator of Penn’s grant for the National Emphysema Treatment Trial that evaluated lung volume reduction surgery for patients suffering from end-stage emphysema. Dr. Kaiser is a pioneer in the technique of video thoracoscopy, for which he designed and patented a set of instruments.
Author of more than 250 original papers, Dr. Kaiser is the author or co-author of 13 books. He has been named both a “Top Doc” and a “World Class Doc” multiple times by Philadelphia Magazine, and has been listed in Best Doctors in America.
