Lectures

Robert L. Trelstad, MD
Acting Director
trelstad@umdnj.edu
Curriculum vitae

Robert L. Trelstad received a BA from Columbia in 1961, Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa and MD from Harvard in 1966, cum laude, Alpha Omega Alpha. During medical school he was awarded a George B. Wislocki Fellowship in Anatomy and spent 1963-1964 in embryological research in the laboratories of Drs. Elizabeth D. Hay and Jean-Paul Revel. He trained in Pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and was a Research Fellow from 1967 to 1969 in the Laboratory of Experimental Embryology at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1969 he returned to Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital where he completed his training in pathology while simultaneously conducting research in the Developmental Biology Laboratory in the Department of Medicine, headed by Dr. Jerome Gross. He has been awarded fellowships by the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, American Cancer Society and American Heart Association and numerous grants from federal, state and private sources. He was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School from 1972 to 1981. While at Harvard he was on the Staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital and served as Chief of Pathology at the Boston Shriners Burns Institute from 1975 to 1981.

From 1981 to 1998 he has been Professor and Chair of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. In 1982 he was elected President of the Society for Developmental Biology and served on its Board for 3 years. From 1982 to 1989 he was Secretary of the American Society for Cell Biology and from 1983 to 1987 he served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Shriners Hospitals for Crippled Children. In 1992 he received the Distinguished Teacher in the Basic Sciences national award from the Association of American Medical Colleges. He has served on numerous editorial boards, study sections and national committees, including an appointment by Secretary Sullivan and President Bush to the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development from 1993 to 1997. In the spring of 1998 he stepped down as Chair to become the Acting Director of the Child Health Institute of New Jersey, a new program initiative at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. His interests are in developmental biology, matrix-cell biology and biomedical information management.