The Reporter: December 1997, Vol.8, No.5
Other SDOS News: New Professorship

The Columbia Trustees have approved a new named chair for SDOS the George Guttmann Professorship of Craniofacial Surgery. The professorship is named in honor of the father of Dr. Ruth Guttmann, P&S professor emeritus of radiology, who is also a member of the Columbia-Presbyterian Health Sciences Advisory Council. Dr. Guttmann has underwritten the chair memorializing her father, who was an oral surgeon.

In 1994, Dr. Guttmann endowed the Thomas S. Zimmer Professorship of Reconstructive Surgery at P&S in memory of her husband, a pioneer in reconstructive surgery. The Guttmann professorship will foster work in the field of cranio-maxiollofacial surgery. The Guttmann Professorship is the fifth named chair for SDOS.

The first professor appointed to the Guttmann chair is Dr. Steven M. Roser, director of the division of oral and maxillofacial surgery and previously was professor of clinical dentistry. Dr. Roser has dental and medical degrees from Harvard. He joined the faculty of P&S and SDOS in 1981."Dr. Roser is a leader in the field of craniofacial reconstruction with a primary interest and expertise in posttraumatic injury and reconstruction of congenital anomalies," says Dr. Allan J. Formicola, SDOS dean.

Dr. Roser is co-director of the Center for Craniofacial Reconstruction and Rehabilitation, located in Babies & Children's Hospital. Each fall for the past seven years, in partnership with Healing the Children Northeast, Dr. Roser has organized a group of volunteers primarily from the medical center who travel to Latin America where they perform surgery for children with cleft lips/palates who would otherwise go untreated because of limited medical access.