Joseph Cheung, MD, PhD

Great experience in the lab. Joe taught me animal surgery (tracheostomy, cannulating the rat ureter, etc., when Joe was actually a lab-bench person doing his own experiments rather than an armchair-computer scientist as we all metamorphosed into in our senior careers). Joe let me do whatever I wanted to do. So I never worked on the kidney (well, maybe a slight detour into the isolated perfused rat kidney which is a terrible preparation) but concentrated on working with isolated cardiac myocytes. I have been working with cardiac myocytes ever since and all my funding is from NHLBI and AHA, rather than NIDDK or ASN. Joe has been very supportive throughout my fellowship training and junior faculty at HMS, e.g., inviting me to attend membrane physiology classes at the Medical School. Later on, Joe also advanced my career and increased my National visibility by successfully nominating me for elected membership into the prestigious American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Clinical and Climatological Association.