Mike Main, M.D., has been selected as one of five new trustees of Central College in Pella, Iowa. Their terms began July 1.

After graduating from Central in 1987, Mike Main completed an M.D. degree from the University of Iowa College Of Medicine and postgraduate training at UT Southwestern and at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Main is now Professor of Medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Medical Director of the Cardiovascular Ultrasound Imaging Laboratory at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute.

Neil L. Spector, M.D., Duke University cancer physician-scientist and Lyme disease survivor, has been appointed to the scientific advisory board of the Greenwich, Connecticut-based Global Lyme Alliance.

One of the nation’s top oncologists, Dr. Spector is Associate Professor of Medicine and of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke. He also is the Director of the Developmental Therapeutics program for the Duke Cancer Institute.

After receiving his medical degree from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Dr. Spector completed his internal medicine internship and residency at UT Southwestern in 1986. He completed his hematology/medical oncology training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School.

His personal experience with the near-death consequences of undiagnosed and untreated Lyme disease is the subject of his 2015 memoir “Gone in a Heartbeat: A Physician’s Search for True Healing.” In his book, Dr. Spector recounts how he began to experience debilitating health problems, including overwhelming fatigue, cardiac arrhythmias and joint pain. Years later, doctors discovered his heart had nearly been destroyed by undetected Lyme disease. He learned that unless he received an immediate transplant, he had only 72 hours to live.

Dr. Spector previously served as Director of GlaxoSmithKline’s Exploratory Medical Sciences in Oncology, where he successfully developed two important cancer drugs – one for pediatric leukemia and the other a targeted therapy for breast cancer – and guided them through Food and Drug Administration approval.

Vani Venkatachalam, M.D., has joined MD Pediatric Associates. Her clinical practice will be in both the Coppell and Flower Mound offices.

Dr. Venkatachalam is board certified and has special interests in treating universal pediatric conditions such as asthma, infections, and rare blood disorders. She attended medical school at Andhra Medical College, NTR Medical University, in India and completed her residency at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University (Medical College of Virginia) before entering into a one-year fellowship in pediatric hematology and oncology at UT Southwestern, Children’s Medical Center Dallas.

John Yang, M.D., has joined the Marshfield Clinic Park Falls Center and cardiology team at Howard Young Medical Center in Wisconsin. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiology, and Echocardiology.

Dr. Yang received his medical degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine. He completed his internship and residency training at New York University Medical Center, Veterans Affairs Medical Center in New York City. He completed fellowships in research and cardiology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Montefiore/Albert Einstein Medical Center in New York and at UT Southwestern.