College of Medicine and Life Sciences

“The Humanities as a Pathfinder through Burnout and Difficult Conversations”

Nina F. Schor, M.D., Ph.D., is currently Professor of Pediatrics, Neurology, and Neurobiology and Chair Emerita of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Rochester.

From January 2018 through September 2025, she served at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), first as Deputy Director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), and, from August 2022 to September 2025, as the NIH Deputy Director for Intramural Research.

At NINDS, she led the Division of Intramural Research and the Ultra-Rare GENe-targeted Therapies (URGenT) Network and strategic planning and career development programs and served as Interim Director (3 months), and Interim Scientific Director (15 months) along with her duties as Deputy Director.  As NIH Deputy Director for Intramural Research, she oversaw faculty recruitment and development, research regulatory affairs, technology transfer, training and education, and research integrity for the NIH intramural research program.

Before coming to NIH, Dr. Schor spent 20 years on faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, ultimately becoming the Carol Ann Craumer Professor of Pediatric Research, Chief of the Division of Child Neurology in the Department of Pediatrics, and Associate Dean for Medical Student Research at the medical school. In 2006, Dr. Schor became the William H. Eilinger Chair of the Department of Pediatrics, and Pediatrician-in-Chief of the Golisano Children’s Hospital at the University of Rochester, posts she held until January 2018.

For 27 years in academia, her research on neural crest development and neoplasia was continuously funded by NIH. Dr. Schor is a past Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, a 2024 recipient of the Bernice Grafstein Award for Outstanding Mentoring from the Society for Neuroscience, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Zulfiqar A. Bhutta, Robert Harding Inaugural Chair in Global Child Health and Policy at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and the Co-Director of the SickKids Centre for Global Child Health, presented “An intrepid journey through the past, present and future of global child health” as part of 15th Annual S. Amjad Hussain, M.D. Visiting Lecture in Medical Humanities on Oct. 26, 2023. Read his interview with UToledo News.

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An Intrepid Journey through the Past, Present and Future of Global Child Health on Knowledge Stream

Dr. Rita Charon, general internist and literary scholar and one of the founders of the field of narrative medicine, presented "Narrative Power in Health: Inquiry, Equity, and Care" as part of 14th Annual S. Amjad Hussain, M.D. Visiting Lecture in Medical Humanities on Oct. 26, 2023. Read her interview with UToledo News.

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Narrative Powers toward Medicine’s Ideals on Knowledge Stream

Dr. Mohammed A. Fadlalla, Academic Internal Medicine Hospitalist at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, presented "A Doctor's Humanitarian Journey" as part of 13th Annual S. Amjad Hussain, M.D. Visiting Lecture in Medical Humanities. The lecture was held Monday, Dec. 12, 2022. Read his interview with UToledo News. 

Watch the Lecture

A Doctor’s Humanitarian Journey on Knowledge Stream