Rheumatology

Vibeke Strand, MD is an adjunct clinical professor in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University School of Medicine. She has been a clinical rheumatologist for 40 years, previously in subspecialty practice and as a clinical investigator in San Francisco, and senior director of clinical research at 3 pharmaceutical / biotech companies. Since 1991, Dr. Strand has led a consulting practice offering clinical research and regulatory strategy expertise in rheumatic diseases to pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Over the past 30 years she has participated in the development of most of the approved biologic and targeted synthetic agents in RA, PsA, vasculitis as well as SLE, and studied many promising agents in SpA, OA and gout.

Dr. Stanley Cohen is a board-certified rheumatologist and internist who joined Rheumatology Associates in 1975. He is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center and Co-Director of the Division of Rheumatology at Presbyterian Hospital, Dallas. He also is Co-Medical Director of Metroplex Clinical Research Center. He is a past president of the American College of Rheumatology and was honored in 2016 with the designation of Master by the American College of Rheumatology. Dr. Cohen completed a degree in biology from the University of Virginia and received his Doctor of Medicine from the University of Alabama School of Medicine. He completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas, Texas, and a fellowship at UT Southwestern/St. Paul University Hospital

Joseph F. Merola, MD, MMSc, is Associate Professor in the Department of Dermatology and Department of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Merola is board-certified in Dermatology, Internal Medicine, and Rheumatology. He serves as the Vice Chair for Clinical Trials, the Director of the Clinical Unit for Research Innovation and Trials (CUReIT), Director of the Center for Skin and Related Musculoskeletal Diseases and the Associate Program Director for the Harvard Combined Internal Medicine-Dermatology Residency Training Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Dr. Merola earned his medical degree at New York University School of Medicine in New York, New York, followed by his Master of Medical Sciences degree at Harvard Medical School. He completed an internship in Internal Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia

Peter Taylor holds the Norman Collisson chair of musculoskeletal sciences at the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of St. Peter’s College Oxford. He is Head of Experimental Rheumatology at the Botnar Research Centre within the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences. Dr. Taylor studied pre-clinical medical sciences at Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge and his first degree was a BA(Cantab) Physiology in 1982. He subsequently studied clinical medicine at the University of Oxford and graduated in 1985 with BM and BCh degrees. He was awarded a PhD degree in 1996 from the University of London for research on pathogenesis of arthritis and was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2000 and a distinguished member of the British Society for Rheumatology in 2016. Dr. Taylor has clinical interests in inflammatory arthritis and research interests in targeted therapies. Professor Taylor has over thirty years of experience in clinical trial design and international leadership in studies of biologic and small molecular therapies in rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis including the earliest seminal trails of anti-TNF and anti-IL-6 receptor therapy.