Henry Brem and Solomon Snyder Visiting Professorship
The Henry Brem and Solomon Snyder Visiting Professorship was established in 2022 to honor two mentors — Henry Brem, MD, and Solomon Snyder, MD. The visiting professors selected for this lectureship are exceptionally accomplished individuals with meaningful connections to both Drs. Brem and Snyder.
2025 Speaker
- Professor and Vice Chair of Radiology, The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences
- Title: “Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Breast Cancer as a Model for the Future”
About Dr. Rachel Brem
Rachel Brem, MD, is a nationally recognized breast imaging expert, innovator, and academic leader whose career reflects the same spirit of mentorship, translational science, and innovation that defines the Henry Brem/Solomon Snyder Visiting Professorship. She has carried the legacy of advancing patient care through technology, research, and education. Her professional accomplishments in imaging and early cancer detection exemplify the enduring impact of mentorship and scientific curiosity celebrated by this Professorship. (She also did her Fellowship at Johns Hopkins.)
Dr. Rachel Brem’s lecture highlighted the continued burden of breast cancer globally and emphasized how early detection remains the most powerful tool to improve survival. She demonstrated how artificial intelligence is transforming breast imaging by increasing cancer detection rates, reducing false positives, and helping general radiologists perform at the level of breast specialists. Dr. Brem also discussed AI’s potential to reduce healthcare disparities by expanding high-quality screening access in underserved regions and improving resource allocation through more precise risk prediction. Overall, she presented AI as a practical, rapidly maturing tool that enhances, rather than replaces, clinical expertise in breast cancer care.
Past Speakers
2024
Andrew Cameron, MD, PhD
- Surgeon-in-Chief, Johns Hopkins Hospital
- Title: “Xenotransplantation: Past, Present and Future”
2023
Robert S. Langer, ScD
- Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Title: “Biomaterials & Biotechnology: From the Discovery of the First Angiogenesis Inhibitors to the Development of Controlled Drug Delivery Systems, Oligonucleotide Therapies, and the Foundation of Tissue Engineering”
2022
Henry Brem, MD
- Director, Department of Neurosurgery, Johns Hopkins Hospital
- Title: “Developing New Therapies for Brain Tumors”
About Henry Brem and Solomon Snyder
Dr. Brem, Neurosurgeon-in-Chief at Johns Hopkins, is internationally acclaimed as one of the world’s foremost brain tumor surgeon-scientists, and globally recognized for his pioneering work on the local delivery of chemotherapy to brain tumors.
Dr. Snyder is a world-renowned neuroscientist who made myriad contributions to neuropharmacology and neurochemistry. He holds nine honorary doctorates and received numerous awards, including the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for his groundbreaking research on the opioid receptor. Notably, Dr. Snyder held the highest h-index in the world until 2019.
History of the Henry Brem and Solomon Snyder Visiting Professorship
In 2022, Jay Storm, MD, Chief of the Division of Neurosurgery and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), and Adam Resnick, PhD, Co-Executive Director of CHOP’s Center for Data Driven Discovery in Biomedicine (D3b), established the Brem/Snyder Lectureship to honor two mentors who have profoundly shaped their lives and careers: Henry Brem, MD, and Solomon Snyder, MD.
In 2000, Dr. Storm was a fifth-year neurosurgery resident at Johns Hopkins, beginning a two-year NeuroOncology research fellowship, while Dr. Resnick was a first-year Neuroscience PhD student. Jay worked in the Hunterian Laboratory under the guidance of Dr. Brem, while just down the hall, Adam was rotating in Dr. Snyder’s Laboratory. Through serendipitous meetings and a visit with Jay to the operating room, Jay and Adam connected, forming a friendship rooted in a shared passion for science, a commitment to helping patients suffering from diseases of the nervous system, and the recognition that the current research paradigm was failing patients. During these years, Drs. Brem and Snyder, close friends and collaborators themselves, offered unwavering mentorship, support and guidance, helping to cement the bond between the two young investigators.
The connection between Drs. Storm and Resnick grew so strong that when Jay was offered a faculty position at CHOP in 2004, he made it a condition that Adam join him, despite Adam not yet having completed his PhD with Dr. Snyder. By 2006, they reunited at CHOP and co-founded the Resnick/Storm Translational Brain Tumor Laboratory, which would evolve in 2016 into the Center for Data Driven Discovery in Biomedicine and receive Center of Emphasis designation in 2019.
Throughout Jay’s and Adam's journey, Drs. Brem and Snyder have been steadfast pillars of support for them, providing invaluable mentorship, constructive feedback and friendship. The deep bond between mentor and mentee is at the heart of this lectureship, reflecting the profound influence these mentors have had on their personal and professional growth.