The UAB Department of Anesthesiology is fortunate to have three endowed chair positions. These endowed chairs honor physicians who were important to the development of anesthetic practice in Birmingham and Alabama.
The Alfred Habeeb Chair, created in 1988, is held by Professor and Chairman Keith A. Jones, M.D. The Alice McNeal Chair, created in 1998, is held by Sadis Matalon, Ph.D. The Benjamin Monroe Carraway Chair, also created in 1998, is held by Frederick A. Hensley.
Frederick A. Hensley, M.D.
Dr. Hensley, Professor, Vice Chair / Director of Cardiothoracic Anesthesia, joined the faculty of UAB in September 2009. He received his BS in Biology, Magna Cum Laude, from the University of Scranton in 1975 and earned his MD degree from Penn State College of Medicine in 1979. He completed his Anesthesia Residency at Penn State and Cardiothoracic Anesthesia Fellowship at Penn State / UAB. For 13 years he served as Director of Cardiac Anesthesia at Penn State. Subsequently he was Anesthesiologist-in-Chief at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. For eight years prior to his appointment at UAB, he was Anesthesiologist-in-Chief at Bassett Healthcare affiliated with the College of Physician and Surgeons of Columbia University.
Dr. Hensley's interests are cardiac anesthesia education and administration. His publications have been in the areas of clinical research and education. He is the senior editor of A Practical Approach to Cardiac Anesthesia, now in its 4th edition. For the past 20 years this text has been used by the majority of anesthesia residency training programs in the United States and abroad.
He has served on the editorial board of the "Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia". For over 10 years he was senior editor for the case conference section of the journal. He has also served on the Boards of Directors of the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists and the Accreditation Committee for Perfusion Education. He is an elected member of the AUA (Association of University Anesthesiologists) and a Senior Oral Board Examiner for the ABA (American Board of Anesthesiology).
Keith A. Jones, M.D.
Dr. Jones became Professor and Chairman on July 1, 2006, and has strong ties to Alabama. Born in Anniston, he received his B.S. from the University of Alabama in 1982 before going on to earn his M.D. from the UAB School of Medicine in 1986. He is the first African-American to receive a permanent appointment as department chair in the UAB School of Medicine.
A widely published expert on smooth cell physiology, Dr. Jones joined the Mayo Clinic faculty in 1991 after completing residency and postgraduate work there, including a postdoctoral National Institutes of Health research fellowship. He served as program director of Mayo’s Smooth Muscle Physiology Laboratory, and was promoted to the rank of professor in 2004.
In addition to his many teaching, mentorship and clinical activities, Dr. Jones is a prolific researcher with interests centering on the cellular and biochemical mechanisms by which volatile anesthetics inhibit airway smooth muscle function and by which reactive oxygen species inhibit smooth muscle function. He has authored or co-authored more than 150 scholarly works. His studies have been consistently supported by research grants from the National Institutes of Health.
Sadis Matalon, Ph.D.
Sadis Matalon, Professor of Anesthesiology, Physiology and Biophysics, and Pediatrics, came to this country from Greece in 1966 as a Fulbright Scholar. He received his B.A. in Physics at Macalester College, and his M.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in Physiology from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He spent one year as an associate in Children's Hospital at Northwestern University and then joined the faculty of the Department of Physiology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he rose to the rank of associate professor.
Dr. Matalon joined the faculty of UAB in July 1987. He was a career investigator of the American Lung Association and served as a permanent member of the American Lung Association Research Grant Review Committee and of Pulmonary Study Section of Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program of California. He has served as the Chairman of the Long Range Planning Committee of the Assembly on Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology of the American Thoracic Society; as a member of the Lung Biology and Pathology Study Section, National Institutes of Health; and National Board of Medical Examiners, Test Material Development Committee (TMDC) for Physiology. Dr. Matalon has also served as Chairman, Program Committee, Respiration Section of the American Physiology Society and 1997 Chairman, Annual Respiration Dinner for the Respiration Section of the American Physiology Society. He was the Keynote speaker at the 24th Annual Panhellenic Medical Symposium in Athens, Greece, in 1998; and Director of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Advanced Study Institute on Acute Lung Injury in Corfu, Greece, in 1997 and 1999.
Dr. Matalon has been funded by the NIH since 1978. He was the recipient of the Joint Health Sciences Presidential Teaching Award from UAB in 1997. Dr. Matalon received the Argus Society Award for the best instructor of first-year medical students at UAB in 1997 and 1998; and the 1999 Argus Society Award for Instructional Excellence.