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OMRF welcomes five new board members, names new chairs

OMRF added five new board members and named two scientists as endowed chairs at its annual spring board meeting and honors celebration Tuesday.

Joining the OMRF Board of Directors are:

  • Gov. Bill Anoatubby of Ada. Anoatubby has served as the 30th Governor of the Chickasaw Nation since 1987.
  • Bill Burgess, Jr., of Lawton. He is chairmen of Vortex, Inc., a senior partner of the Burgess & Hightower Law Firm and serves on the board of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.
  • Carl Edwards, of Oklahoma City. Edwards is co-owner of Price Edwards & Company and chairs the board of the Presbyterian Health Foundation.
  • Lew Ward, of Enid. Ward, who chairs the board of Ward Petroleum Corporation, will be inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in November.
  • G. Rainey Williams, Jr., of Oklahoma City. He is president of Marco Capital Group and is a director at both BancFirst Corporation and Benham Investment Holdings.

Also at the meeting, Luke Szweda, Ph.D., was named the Hille Family Foundation Chair in Neurodegenerative Disease Research. Szweda’s research centers on the study of highly reactive oxygen molecules and how they affect heart function, particularly in aging.

Xiao-Hong Sun, Ph.D., was named the Lew & Myra Ward Chair in Biomedical Research. Sun, a member of OMRF’s Immunobiology and Cancer Research Program, focuses her research on an immune system protein that can, in excess, lead to cancer.

Morris Reichlin, M.D., was also named Distinguished Career Scientist for his decades of work in the field of lupus research. Reichlin came to OMRF in 1981 and built OMRF into one of the world’s leading research centers for lupus, a disease that affects an estimated 1.5 million Americans. The program that he created now employs more than 150 staff members and is home to the Lupus Family Registry and Repository, the world’s largest collection of biological samples from families with multiple lupus patients.