In July 2023, we changed our name from AACC (short for the American Association for Clinical Chemistry) to the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine (ADLM). The following page was written prior to this rebranding and contains mentions of the association’s old name. It may contain other out-of-date information as well.
1978 Outstanding Contributions in Education
Hanns-Dieter Gruemer, MD will receive the 1978 the AACC Award for Outstanding Efforts in Education and Training, sponsored by Smith Kline Clinical Laboratories. This is the eighth year that this award has been given.
Dr. Gruemer, a native of Germany, earned his M.D. degree from the Goethe University in Frankfort on the Main with a dissertation on clinical trials with a new antihistaminic drug. Upon graduation in 1949, he worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Physiological Chemistry in Frankfort and later as a physician at the clinical laboratories of the Charité in Berlin, where he also studied chemistry for biologists. In 1955 he became a research biochemist and physician at Pineland Hospital and Training Center, an institution for mentally retarded individuals in Maine. Concurrently, he worked part-time as a research associate at Tufts University Medical School in Boston and was appointed instructor and then senior instructor of medicine. He eventually joined the departments of Pathology and Physiological Chemistry at Ohio State University to head the Division of Clinical Chemistry, a position he held for 14 years until he moved to Richmond, Virginia, in 1977.Dr. Gruemer is now Professor of Clinical Pathology and Director of the Section of Clinical Chemistry at the Medical College of Virginia.
Dr. Gruemer has been a member of AACC since 1966 and has served on the Committee on Education and on the editorial board of Clinical Chemistry. He is a director of the American Board of Clinical Chemistry and the National Registry in Clinical Chemistry. He is also a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Society of Biological Chemists, the Academy of Clinical Laboratory Physicians and Scientists, and the American Medical Association. Dr. Gruemer was the recipient of the Bernard Katchman Award of the Ohio Valley Section, ADLM, in 1976.
His research reflects his broad interest in medicine. Most of his work, however, has focused on amino acid metabolism, inborn errors of metabolism, and most recently, on mechanisms of cellular enzyme release and on membrane disease in the muscular dystrophies. For work done in his laboratory at Ohio State University, Dr. Lawrence Silverman received the first Young Investigator Award. As an educator, Dr. Gruemer has been an advocate for integrating analytical (clinical) chemistry, biochemistry, and clinical medicine into balanced graduate and postgraduate programs for the training of clinical chemists. A great deal of his professional efforts have concentrated on the establishment of minimum standards for clinical chemistry programs. He organized with Dr. Morton Schwartz the first Conference on Education in Clinical Chemistry, held in Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Gruemer was chairman of the subcommittee on accreditation of clinical chemistry and was instrumental with Dr. Paige Besch and Schwartz in the creation of the Commission of Accreditation in Clinical Chemistry.