John D. Reveille, MD
PROFESSOR OF INTERNAL MEDICINE
GEORGE H. BRUCE, JR. PROFESSOR IN ARTHRITIS AND OTHER RHEUMATIC DISEASES
DIRECTOR OF THE DIVISION OF RHEUMATOLOGY AND CLINICAL IMMUNOGENETICS

Dr. Reveille received his rheumatology training at Johns Hopkins University under Dr. Arnett in the 1980's. After fellowship, he was Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham for 4 years before being recruited by Dr. Arnett to join the faculty at UT in 1987. He was promoted to Associate Professor 3 years later and became Professor in 1997. Dr. Reveille was principal investigator at the UT site for the Lupus in Minorities - Nature vs Nurture study (1993-2003) and in 1997, he received the Alfred and Anna Brohn Memorial Award for Service to the Lupus Foundation of America. He was the Director of the North American Spondylitis Consortium (1999-2004) and since 2003, has served as Chairman of the Spondyloarthropathy Component in the XIV International Histocompatibility Workshop and co-chairman of the Spondyloarthritis Research and Treatment Network (SPARTAN). Dr. Reveille has received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Spondylitis Association of America in 2003. In 2002, Dr. Reveille became Director of the Division of Rheumatology and was also Fellowship Program Director (2003-2005). He is also the American College of Rheumatology’s Official Liason to the Pan American League Against Rheumatism (PANLAR). Dr. Reveille is involved in Phase III studies of biologic therapies for ankylosing spondylitis and was named as “Super Docs 2005” in Texas Monthly magazine in August 2005.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Sandeep K. Agarwal M.D., Ph.D.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE

Dr. Agarwal joined the Rheumatology faculty in July of 2007 from Brigham and Women's Hosptial in Boston. He is a clinical rheumatologist as well as a basic science and translational researcher. Dr. Agarwal is a graduate of the M.D./Ph.D. Program at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, where he was elected into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. Dr. Agarwal then moved to Boston where he completed his internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He completed his rheumatology subspecialty training and research post-doctoral fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital in 2006 and spent a year on faculty as an Instructor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Agarwal is board certified in internal medicine and rheumatology. His clinical interests are in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, scleroderma, lupus, dermatomyositis/polymyositis, polymyalgia rheumatica and vasculitis. Dr. Agarwal's laboratory focuses cytokine regulation and fibroblast-immune interactions in autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, anklyosing spondylitis and scleroderma.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Frank C. Arnett, MD
PROFESOR OF INTERNAL MEDICINE AND PATHOLOGY AND LABORATORY MEDICINE
ELIZABETH BIDGOOD CHAIR IN RHEUMATOLOGY

Dr. Arnett received his rheumatology training in the 1970's at Johns Hopkins University under Dr. Lawrence E. Shulman (presently Director Emeritus, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, and a greatly admired mentor and teacher of many of the nation's leading rheumatology investigators here and abroad). Dr. Arnett came to UT in 1984 to become Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of Rheumatology, a position he held until he became Chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine in 2001-2004. Dr. Arnett is internationally known as a clinician, teacher and clinical investigator. He was elected to the Association of American Physicians in 1993 and the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 1995. He served on the Board of Directors of national Alpha OmegaAlpha Honor Medical Society for 9 years and was President of AOA in 1996. He also served on the American Board of Internal Medicine from 1988-1994. In 1997 he became Director of the first NIH-NIAMS Specialized Centers of Research in Scleroderma, the longest continually funded SCOR in scleroderma in the nation (1997-2006). In 1986, he received the American College of Rheumatology Howard and Martha Holley Research Award for his contributions to understanding MHC class II allele in SLE. In 1998, he received the Mark Flapan Lifetime Achievement Award for Scleroderma Research from the Scleroderma Foundation. He received the Herbert L. and Margaret W. DuPont Master Clinical Teacher Award in 2001 and the John P. McGovern Outstanding Clinical Teacher Award in 2001 and 2003. In 2005, Dr. Arnett received the UT Health Science Center’s highest award, the President’s Scholar Award for Teaching. He has been named to both Top Doctors and Best Doctors in America since 2000.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Shervin Assassi, MD
CLINICAL INSTRUCTOR OF INTERNAL MEDICINE

Dr. Assassi came from the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg (Germany) to join the Internal Medicine residency program at UT in 2000. He was voted by his colleagues and faculty as Resident of the Year in 2003 and was also elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Society in the same year. He became a Fellow in the Division of Rheumatology and joined the faculty at UT in 2005 upon completing his rheumatology subspecialty training.

Pravitt Gourh, MD
RESEARCH INSTRUCTOR

Dr. Gourh joined UT as a Research Associate in 2003 after completing his medical training from Maharaja Sayajirao University in India. He joined the UT faculty in 2006 as Instructor of Medicine. His research interests are focused on a genetics based approach to enhance the understanding of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, such as Systemic Sclerosis. He also enjoys teaching Rheumatology fellows, residents, and summer students molecular and statistical approaches for genetic studies.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Maureen D. Mayes, MD MPH
PROFESSOR OF INTERNAL MEDICINE

Dr. Mayes is a rheumatologist and epidemiologist who came from Wayne State University in Detroit where she was Professor of Medicine, to join the UT faculty in 2002. Her primary research and clinical interest is the study of scleroderma. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the NIH/NIAMS funded 'Scleroderma Family Registry and DNA Repository,' that has the dual objectives of identifying genes that influence disease susceptibility and severity, as well as to serve as a national resource to supply genetic material to other investigators to study this disease. Prior to this Registry, Dr. Mayes served as the PI on a population-based scleroderma registry in the Detroit metropolitan area. Data obtained from the population-based registry served as the basis for a study of the incidence, prevalence and survival of scleroderma. In addition, Dr. Mayes has collaborated on research regarding the influence of occupational and other environmental exposures on scleroderma disease occurrence. Dr. Mayes also conducts clinical treatment trials, both NIH and industry funded, in this disease.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Filemon K. Tan, MD PhD
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF INTERNAL MEDICINE

Dr. Tan completed his residency at UT and after a serving a year as Chief Medical Resident in the Department of Internal Medicine, decided to pursue a career in rheumatology largely because of Dr. Arnett's teaching and mentorship. He joined the faculty as Assistant Professor of Medicine in 1998. He received the American College of Rheumatology Senior Rheumatology Scholar Award in 1998, and the General Clinical Research Centers Outstanding Clinical Associate Physician Award in 2000. He is a member of the editorial advisory board for Arthritis and Rheumatism (1999-present) and has served on several national peer review grant committees. He became Associate Professor of Medicine in 2004, and Fellowship Program Director in 2005. His research interests include the contribution of genetic factors that influence susceptibility to autoimmune diseases such as lupus and scleroderma, and the analysis of gene expression patterns in tissues and cells from patients with these connective tissue diseases to discover biological pathways that contribute to disease, or biomarkers that might help predict disease outcome.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Noranna B. Warner, MD PhD
CLINICAL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF INTERNAL MEDICINE

Dr. Warner came from the University of Tennessee to join the UT faculty in 1981. She became Associate Professor of Medicine in 1990 and she is also the Director of Outpatient Clinics in the Department of Internal Medicine. Dr. Warner is a clinical rheumatologist who is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology. She is also a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Society. Her clinical practice includes patients with rheumatic disease referred by another physicians, and independent medical examinations for rheumatic disease as pertains to disability or litigation. Dr. Warner has been listed as one of Houston's "Top Docs" since 2001 by Inside Houston magazine.

Xiadong Zhou, MD
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF INTERNAL MEDICINE

Dr. Zhou obtained his MD from Jiangxi Medical College in Nanchang, China. He joined UT as a Research Associate from Univeristy of Pittsburg in 1998. He became Instructor of Internal Medicine in 1999, and was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2000. Dr. Zhou holds grants from the NIH-NIAMS and the Scleroderma Foundation. He works research interests include systemic sclerosis and inflammatory myopathies.