Fox named first holder of ‘Buddy’ Giesecke Distinguished Professorship

By Deborah Wormser

Dr. Amanda Fox, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Pain Management, has been named the inaugural holder of the A.H. “Buddy” Giesecke, Jr., M.D. Distinguished Professorship in Anesthesiology and Pain Management.

Amanda Fox, M.D., M.P.H.
Dr. Amanda Fox

More than 100 donors established the endowment to honor the memory of Dr. A. H. “Buddy” Giesecke, former Chair of Anesthesiology and Pain Management (1981-1992) who was a major force during his more than 50-year association with UT Southwestern. Dr. Giesecke died in 2011.

“That so many of my father’s colleagues, friends, and family hold him is such esteem is truly an indication of the major role he played in their lives and at UT Southwestern,” said Dr. N. Martin “Marty” Giesecke, Professor and Vice Chair of Anesthesiology and Pain Management.

“It further honors me that the first holder is Dr. Amanda Fox, in whose training I was able to play a small part. To see her rise to this position at UT Southwestern makes me proud,” he added.

Dr. A.H. Giesecke joined the faculty in 1963, pioneering some practices that are now commonplace in the field before retiring as a professor emeritus in 2005. He continued to lecture residents until shortly before his death in 2011.

“In addition to his many accomplishments, Buddy was known for his kindness, sense of humor, and the dignity with which he treated his patients. We are fortunate that Dr. Amanda Fox will be the initial holder of this endowment. She brings many of the fine attributes to the Department that Buddy possessed, primarily a driving desire to plot a better path for our patients via clinical research,” said Department Chair Dr. Charles Whitten.

“I am both humbled and honored to be the first holder of the A.H. "Buddy" Giesecke, Jr., M.D. Distinguished Professorship in Anesthesiology and Pain Management. I will strive to live up to his legacy,” said Dr. Fox, who holds a secondary appointment at UT Southwestern in the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development. “This honor has special meaning to me because I trained under Dr. Marty Giesecke when I was a clinical cardiothoracic anesthesiology fellow at the Texas Heart Institute.”

Dr. Fox joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2014. She is the Vice Chair of Clinical and Translational Research with the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Management  and also leads the newly established Perioperative Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Program, which seeks to understand genetic variation, biomarkers, and other factors before, during, and after surgery that can influence surgical outcomes.

“I have been strongly aided in founding this research program by the wonderful support of my Chairman, Dr. Whitten, along with many other key individuals, both within the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Management and across UT Southwestern, who have made me feel so welcomed here. I also want to acknowledge the devotion of two Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Management research coordinators – Himanshu Dedhia and Kenni Landgraf – who have worked with me to get the research program up and running,” Dr. Fox said.

For more than a decade, Dr. Fox has been a co-investigator with researchers at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in a large, multicenter biobanking study of cardiac surgical patients. Under Dr. Fox’s direction, the study will expand in location (to UT Southwestern) and in scope (by collecting more data that is focused on more outcomes) to allow researchers to identify possible genetic variants and circulating biomarkers in an effort to reduce surgical complications such as postoperative heart failure and kidney injury. The work is expected to involve research collaborations across the UT Southwestern campus.

A Houston native, Dr. Fox is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University (with distinction). She completed medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, and interned at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston. She completed her residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, her fellowship at the Texas Heart Institute, St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston. Dr. Fox also holds an M.P.H. in clinical effectiveness from the Harvard School of Public Health.

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Dr. Giesecke holds the M.T. “Pepper” Jenkins Professorship in Anesthesiology.

Dr. Whitten holds the Margaret Milam McDermott Distinguished Chair in Anesthesiology and Pain Management.