VCU news

By Anne Dreyfuss
C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research

Virginia Commonwealth University recently appointed Brian Aboff, M.D., as senior associate dean for graduate medical education in the School of Medicine and designated institutional official for VCU Health System. He succeeds Mary Alice O’Donnell, Ph.D., who served in the role for 20 years.

“Dr. Aboff is a nationally recognized leader in graduate medical education and brings a wealth of experience to this role,” said Ron Clark, M.D., VCU Health System chief medical officer.

Aboff earned his undergraduate degree from Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania and his M.D. from Weill Cornell Medical College. After completing his internal medicine residency at Vanderbilt, where he was also a chief resident, he served for three years as the chief of general internal medicine services at Wright-Patterson Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio, and then joined Christiana Care Health System in Wilmington, Delaware.

For the past decade, Aboff has served as program director for Christiana Care Health System’s internal medicine and transitional year residency programs and as associate program director for the internal medicine-pediatrics and emergency medicine-internal medicine combined programs. Since 2011, he has also served as the associate chair for education in the Department of Internal Medicine.

The current president of the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine, Aboff has received numerous awards recognizing his teaching and leadership skills and has a number of publications in the graduate medical education domain.

“Aboff’s spectacular record of improving the quality of graduate medical education across the country will be a significant asset to VCU School of Medicine and we are pleased to have him on board,” said VCU School of Medicine Dean Peter F. Buckley, M.D.

Aboff began his new role at VCU on April 26.