Robert “Bob” Paul Davis, MD, 97, died Feb. 14. He was a nephrologist and professor emeritus of medical science at Brown.
Born in Dorchester, MA, Dr. Davis attended Harvard, where his undergraduate studies were interrupted by his service in the US Navy as a gunnery officer on the USS Los Angeles during World War II. After attending Harvard Medical School and completing his internal medicine residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, he was elected to the Society of Fellows at Harvard and conducted pioneering research on cell transport in the human kidney.
After a professorship at the University of North Carolina cut short by frequent firsthand encounters with the flagrant racism of the Jim Crow South, Dr. Davis served eight years on the faculty of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In 1967, he joined Brown as a professor of medical science and The Miriam Hospital as physician-in-chief. There, he was the driving force behind the construction of a building dedicated entirely to laboratory research, and led the team that performed the first kidney transplant in Rhode Island. From 1974 to 1979, he served as director of Renal and Metabolic Diseases at The Miriam, working to integrate regional and state organ banks and promote organ transplantation in the state.
Dr. Davis continued to teach medical students and undergraduates at Brown, and established, with philosophy and religious studies faculty, one of the country’s first academic programs in biomedical ethics. He spent the last three decades of his life pursuing scholarly and collecting interests he had maintained since childhood. In the early 1990s, he founded a bookstore devoted to 19th- and 20th-century British and American literature, culture, and science. For more than 20 years, and well into his 90s, he attended the annual Dickens conference at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
In the weeks before his death, Dr. Davis led a champagne tasting and poetry reading with his fellow residents at Laurel Mead in Providence. He leaves his wife of 70 years, Ruby; three children; and two grandchildren.
Maureen Allwood, PhD, 59, died March 4. She was a visiting scientist in psychiatry and human behavior and at the Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine and the Stress, Trauma, and Resilience (STAR) COBRE at Brown. Born in Jamaica, Dr. Allwood moved to the US with her family at age 8. She earned a bachelor’s in psychology from Michigan State University and a master’s in clinical psychology at Eastern Michigan University. At the University of Missouri, Dr. Allwood earned a second master’s and her PhD in clinical psychology. She completed her internship at the Boston Consortium and, in 2007, her postdoctoral research fellowship at Brown.
Dr. Allwood returned to Brown during a sabbatical from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where she was a professor of psychology and co-director of the department’s mentorship program for underrepresented and first-generation undergraduate students. She was also an adjunct associate professor of population and family health at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and a contributor and founding faculty member for the Center for Trauma Recovery and Juvenile Justice and the Center for the Treatment of Developmental Trauma Disorders at UConn Health.
Her research focused on the developmental effects of trauma and violence and their disproportionate impacts on different sociodemographic groups. In her research, clinical work, teaching, and advocacy, she devoted herself to the well-being of marginalized youth and communities. Dr. Allwood is survived by her husband, Alfred Ojukwu; three children; her mother; and many colleagues and friends.
Ruby Lee F’13 F’15, MD, 41, died March 8. She was a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior and the associate program director of the Brown Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship.
Originally from Texas, Dr. Lee received her undergraduate and medical degrees from Texas A&M University, then completed her adult psychiatry residency at the University of Maryland. She went on to complete child and adolescent psychiatry and forensic psychiatry fellowships at Brown—making her one of a small number of psychiatrists nationwide to be boarded in general, pediatric, and forensic psychiatry.
Over the course of her career, Dr. Lee practiced at Bradley Hospital, the Rhode Island Training School, Eleanor Slater Hospital, the Adult Correctional Institution, and Hartselle & Associates. She provided compassionate, skillful psychiatric care for adults and adolescents who were incarcerated, and she conducted risk assessments and competency-to-stand trial evaluations with exceptional skill, empathy, and insight. As an educator, she was dedicated to training forensic psychiatry fellows, general psychiatry residents, and medical students who benefited from her wisdom, wit, and expertise. Dr. Lee was devoted to her family. She is survived by her husband, Leo Tsay, MD; a son; and her parents.
Barbara Schepps Wong, MD, 81, died March 14. She was a professor emerita of diagnostic imaging, clinician educator, at Brown.
Born in Chester, PA, Dr. Wong funded her undergraduate education at the University of Pennsylvania by working in various research labs on campus—an integral part of her education. She went on to Hahnemann Medical College (supporting herself by working at the Hahnemann Hospital emergency department) and then radiology residency at New England Deaconess and Boston City hospitals.
At her first job, in Ohio State University Hospital’s radiology department, Dr. Wong had her first brush with gender discrimination—and won pay parity for the few female physicians employed there at the time. She then settled in Rhode Island, where a radiology chief told her, “I didn’t hire her nor will I ever hire a woman radiologist,” before she was hired by Ray Medical Group (now Rhode Island Medical Imaging). At a time when there were few women leaders in medicine, Dr. Wong was elected and served for 15 years as president of RIMI. Under her leadership, the group experienced spectacular growth and increasing academic prominence, with RIMI becoming the primary radiology group affiliated with Brown’s medical school.
In 1995, Dr. Wong led the founding of the Anne C. Pappas Center for Breast Imaging at Rhode Island Hospital, serving as its director until she retired in 2008. She led the way in caring for women with breast disease in southern New England, and had scores of grateful patients who considered her integral to the early diagnosis of their breast cancer and their subsequent successful therapy. Dr. Wong also served as president of the Rhode Island Hospital Medical Staff Association, a member of the hospital’s board of directors, and president of the Rhode Island Medical Society. In 2004, she received the hospital’s Milton W. Hamolsky, M.D., Outstanding Physician Award.
Truly a Renaissance woman, Dr. Wong was a talented sculptor, artist, knitter, and basket weaver, and an avid reader, opera lover, Broadway enthusiast, and Red Sox fan. Numerous charities benefited from her philanthropy. After retirement, she spent part of each year as a volunteer teaching assistant at a Maui grade school.
Dr. Wong is survived by her husband of 56 years, Richard Wong, MD; her daughter and son-in-law; and two grandchildren. Donations in her memory may be made to the Pappas Center for Breast Imaging, giving.lifespan.org/Pappas-centerdonate; Alzheimer’s Foundation; Rhode Island Community Food Bank; or the charity of your choice.
Michael L. Chang MD’81, 71, died March 19. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, he grew up in Iowa and earned a bachelor’s degree from St. Olaf College. After medical school at Brown, he completed residency and fellowship training at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Chang dedicated more than 30 years to interventional cardiology, first in the San Francisco Bay Area and then at Mercy Heart Institute/Dignity Health Hospitals in Sacramento. He served as medical director of the Cardiovascular Service for the greater Sacramento area, and oversaw the introduction of many innovative cardiac procedures.
Big-hearted, Michael lived a life of joy and adventure: running marathons with his wife, daughters, and friends, summiting mountains, playing iconic golf courses, and traveling the world. He is survived by his wife of 47 years, Barbara; four children; three grandchildren; and two sisters. Gifts in his memory may be made to the UCSF Aging and Memory Center.
David Egilman ’74 MD’78, MPH, 71, died April 2. He was a clinical professor of family medicine.
Born in Boston to a Holocaust survivor, Dr. Egilman won a scholarship to Brown, where he earned a bachelor’s in molecular biology and his medical degree. After training in internal medicine at the NIH, he earned his Master of Public Health from Harvard. His experiences working in Cincinnati as part of the US Public Health Service brought him face to face with mining and industrial workers who had developed medical conditions after years in unsafe work environments. This sparked his passionate fight against unethical health practices carried out by corporations and governments.
For decades, Dr. Egilman pursued an offensive strategy toward health justice by working tirelessly as an expert witness and consultant. Over his career, he provided critical testimony against Johnson & Johnson, claiming that it had failed to reveal the health risks of talc. He relentlessly pursued accountability for corporations implicated in asbestosrelated diseases. And he was instrumental in uncovering communications in 1950 that warned of the risks involved in government radiation tests on humans—for which the US government later apologized, in 1996.
Dr. Egilman’s work as an expert witness brought him before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce, the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, and numerous FDA advisory committees. His work consulting and testifying had him involved in many legal cases unveiling the harmful effects of medications. Board certified in internal medicine and preventive and occupational medicine and an epidemiologist, Dr. Egilman served as a clinical professor at Brown since 1985 and had a private practice in Attleboro, MA. He was a past editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health and the editor of The Journal of Scientific Practice and Integrity. He is survived by his wife, Helene; two sons; and many colleagues and friends.
James “Jim” Wyche, PhD, 81, died July 1. He was an associate provost and a professor of molecular biology, cell biology, and biochemistry at Brown. Hailing from Mattituck on Long Island, NY, Dr. Wyche earned his bachelor’s in bacteriology at Cornell and his PhD at Johns Hopkins. After completing a postdoc at the University of California, he held faculty appointments at the University of Missouri and then Hunter College, where he also served as program coordinator and chair of the Minority Biomedical Research Program. He joined Brown’s MCB department in 1988, serving as associate dean for minority affairs for the Division of Biology and Medicine and then the University. His research focused on programmed cell death and later on developing drugs to treat pancreatic cancer.
Beginning in 1991, Dr. Wyche served as associate provost of Brown for 10 years, during which he established the Brown-Xavier program, which accepted three biology or chemistry majors from Xavier University each year into Brown’s PhD biology program. In 1992, with President Vartan Gregorian, Dr. Wyche cofounded the Leadership Alliance, a consortium of institutions that provide research, mentoring, and networking experiences for historically underrepresented groups. The alliance’s Minority Undergraduate Summer Research Early Identification Program was renamed the James H. Wyche First-Year Research Experience, in recognition of his significant contributions.
Dr. Wyche served as the first executive director of the Leadership Alliance until 2001, when he left Brown to become interim president of Tougaloo College in Jackson, MS. Subsequent roles included professor of biology and vice provost and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami; professor and vice provost for academic affairs at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center; director of the Division of Human Resource Development at the National Science Foundation; and provost and chief academic officer at Howard University. He retired from Howard as a professor in 2019.
While at Brown, Dr. Wyche served as chair of the Minorities Affairs Committee of the American Society for Cell Biology and received the society’s Service Award for his work with the committee. Johns Hopkins’ biology department established a graduate fellowship in his name that was awarded to the most outstanding underrepresented applicant of each entering class.
Predeceased by one son, Dr. Wyche is survived by his wife, Karen, two sons, a daughter in-law, and a grandson. Donations in his memory can be made at go.brown.edu/JamesWyche for the Leadership Alliance James Wyche First- Year Research Experience.
