Sanjiv Sam Gambhir obituary for EJNMMI
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OBITUARY
Sanjiv Sam Gambhir obituary for EJNMMI Andrei Iagaru 1 & I. Ross McDougall 1
# Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
On Friday 17th of July, Professor Sanjiv “Sam” Gambhir was heralded in a stirring and moving ceremony attended online by several hundreds of his colleagues and friends. Sam was also able to watch. The President of the Stanford University and the Dean of the School of Medicine praised Sam’s huge contributions in medical sciences to the University, the School of Medicine, other University Departments, to industry and most importantly to patients. Sam’s wife Aruna gave a heartfelt review of their lives and careers starting in Los Angeles before settling in Northern California. Sam was awarded the Dean’s Medal, the highest award of the medical school, and This article is part of the Topical Collection on Editorial. Picture used with permission from Dr. Sandip Biswal’s collection. * Andrei Iagaru [email protected] 1
Division of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, Department of Radiology, Stanford University, 300 Pasteur Drive, Stanford, CA 94305-5281, USA
establishment of The Sanjiv “Sam” Gambhir Professorship in Translational Medicine was announced. Many of those watching were aware that Sam, our colleague and dear friend, had advanced cancer but we were shocked and saddened to learn he passed away on July 18. He is survived by his wife Aruna, his sister, and his parents. Sam moved from India to the USA with his family at a young age. He was an exceptionally brilliant student and matriculated at the Arizona State University at the age of 15, graduating BS summa cum laude and inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Professor Stuart Lindsay who was one of Sam’s physics teachers at ASU described his recollections of him “I first knew Sam as an undergraduate in the first class I taught at ASU, back in 1979 when Sam was a senior at the tender age of 16. He politely corrected my mistakes and I used his homework sets as my grading template.” Sam was accepted to the MD-PhD Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), graduating PhD in biomathematics in 1990 and 3 years later received the gold medal as the outstanding medical student when graduating MD. The combined education and training in physics, biomathematics, and medicine made his choice of Nuclear Medicine very fitting. He completed a residency in Nuclear Medicine at UCLA and entered the academic ranks there as an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology in 1994. He embarked on his career as an investigator, clinician, and educator each of which is described below. Sam was promoted to tenured Professor in 2003 and in the same year was selected to be Chief of the Division of Nuclear Medicine and Director of the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS) with the title of Professor of Radiology. Six years later, he received the endowed Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor for Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research. While at UCLA, Sam published a series of clinical
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