As a dedicated physician and educator, Dr. William N. Kelley has committed more than 50 years to the field of health care. In 1963, he earned a Doctor of Medicine from Emory University and subsequently began an internship and then residency in medicine at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, TX. After completing his residency, he became a clinical associate in the section on human biochemical genetics of the arthritis and rheumatism branch at the National Institutes of Health. In 1967, he became a teaching fellow of medicine at Harvard University and a senior resident of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. Dr. Kelley joined the Duke University School of Medicine in 1968, serving as chief of the division of rheumatic and genetic diseases and as a professor of medicine. Before leaving Duke University, he briefly served as a Macy faculty scholar at the University of Oxford in England. In 1975, he moved on to the University of Michigan Medical School, where he served as a professor of biological chemistry and internal medicine, and as chairman of the department of internal medicine.
In 1989, Dr. Kelley began his current tenure at the University of Pennsylvania. He began as dean of the Perelman School of Medicine, as chief executive officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and as the Robert G. Dunlop professor of medicine. Today, he continues his work at the university as a professor of medicine. In addition, he has also been active on several committees of the National Institutes of Health and he served on the boards of various health care companies, including Merck & Co. Inc., GenVec Inc. (now Intrexon), Beckman Coulter Inc., and TransEnterix Surgical Inc. Dr. Kelley has also served on the editorial boards of numerous medical journals, published more than 300 professional texts, and authored 17 books. He was the co-founder and senior editor of “The Textbook of Rheumatology” for five editions, and was the founder and editor-in-chief of “The Textbook of Internal Medicine” for three editions. Previously, he served as senior editor of the “Journal of Clinical Investigation.”
Throughout his accomplished career, Dr. Kelley has strived to develop the best possible health care ecosystem through his professional pursuits. In 1993, he founded the first fully integrated university based academic health system in the United States and, likely, the world. In addition, along with co-investigators Dr. Tom Palella and Dr. Myron Levine, in 1987, they established and patented the first proof of principle for in-vivo gene therapy (insertion of a therapeutic gene directly into the body) called the Viral-Mediated Gene Transfer System.
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