The endowed professorship was established by the college to honor Kate Daum, a physician who directed the UI Nutrition Department from 1927 to 1955 and helped pave the way for female scientists at the UI.

A UI faculty member since 1986, Wilson also holds appointments in microbiology in the UI Carver College of Medicine and epidemiology in the UI College of Public Health. She is a physician-scientist with UI Hospitals and Clinics and directs the UI Travel Clinic.

She also is a staff physician and researcher with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Iowa City Health Care System.

"The appointment of Dr. Mary Wilson to the Kate Daum Professorship is a well-deserved recognition of her outstanding work in infectious disease and impressive dedication to educating students and scientists," said Paul Rothman, M.D., professor and head of the UI Department of Internal Medicine.

In addition to being a classroom and clinical teacher, Wilson has been a member of 30 doctoral degree committees and mentored many students and fellows at all levels.

Her primary research focuses on visceral leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that is prevalent in many underdeveloped countries and transmitted to mammals through the bite of a sand fly. She has received nearly $2.1 million in National Institutes of Health research funding and approximately $1.3 million in VA Merit Review Grants, to name some of her major funding awards.

Wilson earned a bachelor's degree in 1975 from Carleton College and a medical degree in 1980 from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. She completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School and a fellowship in infectious diseases at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

In 1986 she studied tropical medicine at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C. As a Fulbright scholar in 1998, she served as a visiting professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, Brazil.

Mary E. Wilson, M.D.

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