I received a BA in Chemistry from Texas A&M University in 1980, and was the fourth generation of his family to attend Texas A&M.  I graduated with the MD degree in 1984 rom the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.  I was then an internal medicine intern and resident at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center from 1984 through 1987, serving as Medicine Chief Resident 1987-1988.  I was an endocrinology fellow at the same institution and a post-doctoral fellow in immunology and genetics at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation from 1988 to 1991, joining the faculty at OUHSC in the Department of Medicine and the Arthritis & Immunology Program at OMRF in 1991.

My research concentrates on the immunology, genetics and endocrinology of systemic lupus erythematosus and Sjögren’s syndrome.  I have published ~350 scientific articles, and had continuous funding by the National Institutes of Health since 1991. I was an NIH Fogarty International Fellow at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 1998. From May 2008 through June 2011 I was Associate Dean for Clinical & Translational Research in the College of Medicine at OUHSC. In 2017 I was appointed Associate Chief of Staff for Research at the Oklahoma City Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center.  I began teaching the History of Medicine Enrichment course for second year medical students at OUHSC in 2010, which is one of several humanities electives in the fall semester.  Once I was teaching this course, I decided I wanted to formalize my longstanding interest in medical history; thus, I began taking courses in the on-line in the Hopkins program.

I am now a Masters student at the point of starting research for my thesis.  I am planning to write about Isabella Vandervall, a Black woman physician who practiced in Harlem beginning in 1915.  She was an early advocate for birth control.  I just submitted a grant to the New York City Public Library as a short term scholar in order to study her papers at the NYPL Schlomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.  I am trying to carve out a portion of my career for medical history and have published 2 history papers with another in preparation.  I have published two short stories as well as a paper in the Journal of Irreproducible Results. My wife Bea and I live in an historic neighborhood in Oklahoma City in a house built in 1928 (That is about as old as houses get in OKC). I enjoy golf, soccer refereeing, practicing my Spanish at free clinics as well playing the trumpet and the tuba.