Introduction to Guest Editor

Serdar E. Bulun, MD

Our guest editor, Alan Hersh DeCherney, is a very influential physician scientist who has advanced academic obstetrics and gynecology over the past several decades. He received his bachelor's degree in natural sciences from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he later served on the board of trustees from 2006 to 2010. His medical degree is from Temple University School of Medicine. He was awarded the Henry Laughlin Alumnus of the Year Award in 2005.

Dr. DeCherney also holds an honorary master of arts degree from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He did a research fellowship in immunology at the Lister Institute in London; his internship in medicine was at the University of Pittsburgh, followed by a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania.

He is currently director of the Program in Reproductive and Adult Endocrinology and chief of the reproductive biology and medicine branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. DeCherney was a pioneer when in vitro fertilization was first performed successfully in the United States. He was among a handful of physicians who treated some of the earliest patients. Dr. DeCherney has mentored more than a hundred reproductive endocrinologists over the years.

Previously he was the John Slate Ely Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale University School of Medicine and the division director of reproductive endocrinology and infertility and women's health services. Prior to that, Dr. DeCherney was the Phaneuf Professor and chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Tufts University School of Medicine where he received the Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award.

He was the director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1996 to 2006 and chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology from 1996 to 2002.

Dr. DeCherney is a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, past president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and a past president of the Society for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, the Society of Reproductive Surgeons, and the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology. He is a member of the American Gynecological and Obstetrical Society and a past president of the Society for Gynecologic Investigation. He is the recipient of the President's Achievement Award from the Society of Gynecologic Investigation.

He was the editor in chief of the journal Fertility and Sterility from 1996 to 2011. He was an associate editor and editorial board member of the New England Journal of Medicine and a member of the editorial board of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Dr. DeCherney served as a member of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, and he is a fellow ad eundem of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, London.

Dr. DeCherney has been a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies since 2004 and was chair of the IOM interest group on maternal and child and human development from 2008 to 2010.