Sharon Rounds, MD
Biography
Sharon Irene Smith Rounds MD is Professor of Medicine and of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Brown Medical School and staff pulmonary/critical care physician at the Providence VA Medical Center. A native of Maine, Dr. Rounds is a graduate of Wellesley College and of Tufts University School of Medicine. She trained in internal medicine at the University of California-San Francisco where she was a Chief Medical Resident at San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Rounds did a Pulmonary/Critical Care fellowship at the University of Colorado where she was a research fellow in the Cardiovascular-Pulmonary Research Laboratory. She subsequently returned to New England where she was an Assistant, then Associate, Professor of Medicine in the Pulmonary Section at Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Rounds was appointed Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown Medical School in 1987 and Professor of Medicine in 1994. She was Associate Dean of Medicine (Faculty Affairs) at Brown Medical School from 2001-2006. She was Chief of Pulmonary/Critical Care at the Providence VAMC from 1987-2010 and Chief of the Medical Service at the Providence VA Medical Center from 2006-2015. She is now Associate Dean for Translational Science at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
Dr. Rounds has combined careers in clinical pulmonary/critical care medicine, teaching, and research on the pulmonary circulation. Basic science research interests include mechanisms of endothelial cell injury and effects of post-translational processing on small GTPase function. Her clinical research interests are pulmonary hypertension and factors impairing compliance with therapy of lung diseases. An author of over 100 publications, she has been continuously supported by research grants from the NIH and/or VA since 1981.
Dr. Rounds was Principal Investigator for the Short-Term Training Program to Increase Diversity in Health-Related Research Training Grant awarded to Brown by the National Heart Lung Blood Institute from 1999-2012. This grant funds summer research experiences for under-represented undergraduate students in research laboratories at Brown Medical School. Dr. Rounds was co-Director of the Brown CardioPulmonary Research Training Program, a program to train young investigators in Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Molecular Pathobiology or Health Services/Outcomes research. She is currently multi-PI on the Brown Respiratory Research Training Program, funded by a T32 from the NHLBI. Dr. Rounds is a member of the Executive Committee for the T35 grant to fund summer research experiences for Brown medical students.
Dr. Rounds has served as a regular member of NIH study sections--Respiratory and Applied Physiology, Lung Biology and Pathology, and Respiratory Integrative Biology and Translational --as well as on numerous panels and advisory groups. She has served as a member of the VA Career Development Review Committee and the VA Cardiopulmonary Medical Research Advisory Group. Long interested in career development, she has served on study sections for career development grants for the American Lung Association, the VA, the American Heart Association, the NHLBI, the Francis Family Foundation, the American Thoracic Society, and as a member of the NHLBI Institutional Training Grant Review Committee. Dr. Rounds currently chairs the Observational Study Board for PVDOMICS study for the NHLBI.
Dr. Rounds has been an active volunteer for the American Thoracic Society and was President in 2004-05. In her work for the ATS, she has been a leader in the Women's Mentoring Program and founded a program for Minority Trainee Travel Awards. She led planning for the ATS centennial celebration in 2004-05. Dr. Rounds chaired the ATS Scientific Advisory Committee, and as such she was responsible for raising funds, administering, and reviewing applications for the ATS research program in 2008-09. She was a member of the Board of Trustees of the ATS Foundation.
She is series editor for the Springer/ATS Respiration book series and an Associate Editor for Physiological Reports, an open access journal sponsored by the American Physiological Society, the Physiological Society (London), and the Scandinavian Physiological Society.
In recognition of lifelong achievements in clinical care, research, and education in the area of pulmonary/critical care medicine, Sharon Rounds was named Edward Livingston Trudeau Medalist by the American Thoracic Society in May, 2017. In 2018 Rounds was elected to be a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science because of "distinguished contributions to pulmonary/critical care/sleep medicine particularly for the role of the pulmonary endothelium in the pathogenesis of acute lung injury and pulmonary hypertension". In 2019 Sharon Rounds was named Breathing for Life awardee of the ATS Foundation for "philanthropy, scientific achievement, and mentoring". In 2019 she also received the Grover Prize from the ATS Pulmonary Circulation Assembly for "For outstanding contributions to the study of the effects of hypoxia and high altitude on the pulmonary circulation." In 2020 Dr. Rounds was honored by the Milton W. Hamolsky Lifetime Achievement Award from the American College of Physicians, Rhode Island Chapter.