This profile is based on one written by Harold Amos, PhD, the program's original director, as part of his work for the program's 15th anniversary activities in 1998. The featured scholar was selected by the NPO as representative of the success of the program across different years, specialties, locations and with scholars of diverse backgrounds.
The General Hospital Corporation - Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, Mass.)
$119,993; July 1988 to June 1990
ID# 012949
$7,221; July 1990 to June 1990
ID# 015963
University of Michigan Medical School (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
$157,625; July 1991 to June 1993
ID# 016242
Fellowship Research Topic
Physiologic Regulation of Gastrin Gene Expression
Position as of February 2008
- Professor of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical Center
- Professor of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, University of Michigan Medical Center
- Faculty in Cellular and Molecular Biology and Cancer Treatment Center, University of Michigan Medical Center
Profile
Juanita Merchant, MD, PhD, earned an undergraduate degree at Stanford University in 1977 and both an MD and a PhD from Yale University School of Medicine in 1984. She completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1984 to 1987. During the first two years of her MMFDP fellowship, she continued postdoctoral training in molecular biology in the Massachusetts General Hospital gastrointestinal unit. She interrupted her MMFDP fellowship for one year in order to complete clinical training in gastroenterology at UCLA. She was then recruited to the University of Michigan as an assistant professor and developer of a molecular biology laboratory. She completed her MMFDP fellowship at the University of Michigan.
Merchant is a member of the University of Michigan Cancer Center, University of Michigan Gut Peptide Center, and Center of Organogenesis. She was elected to a three-year term to represent the medical school in the University Faculty Senate. She is on the editorial boards of Gastroenterology, American Journal of Physiology, and Digestive Disease and Sciences. She was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and received the American Digestive Health Foundation's Robert and Sally Funderburg Award for Gastric Cancer and University of Michigan's Jerome Conn Research Award in 1998. She was elected ASCI councilor in 2001.
Merchant teaches medical students for the departments of biochemistry and physiology, as well as internal medicine residents and gastroenterology fellows. She has personally mentored many undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows in her laboratory. Merchant was the first alumna of the MMFDP to officially mentor a new fellow. She was appointed to the MMFDP National Advisory Committee in 1999, one of four former fellows serving in that capacity in 2005.