TORONTO — Toronto physician Arnie Aberman will be honoured this year by the Canadian Society for the Weizmann Institute of Science and the University of Toronto at a gala dinner on Nov. 3.

The event will be held at the Sheraton Centre Hotel. It will be co-chaired by David Naylor, president of the University of Toronto, and by Daniel Zajfman, president of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

Funds raised at the dinner will be shared equally by both universities, for their MD and PhD programs.

The tribute was launched  recently at Naylor’s official residence.

Mel Silverman, founding director of the U of T MD/PhD program, said that students enrolled it must fulfil all the requirements of both the MD and PhD degrees, which he said can take from 14 to 16 years to complete.

“It is a long-term investment, with the objective of a career as a clinician scientist, one who can go from the lab to the bedside and back again,” he added.

Michael Ward, a sixth-year student in the program at U of T, is researching genetic therapies for those with cardiovascular disease. “It’s a great experience,” he said, although it means “putting off your life until your mid-30s.”

Besides the time, he said, it is a considerable financial burden on the student.

Dr. Amir Shlomai, who already has both degrees, is now completing his residency in internal medicine at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. He is especially interested in liver disease and has researched the Hepatitis B virus.

He praised the atmosphere in the Weizmann MD/PhD program as one in which participants “think, talk, and dream science.”

Montreal-born Aberman studied pulmonary diseases and critical care medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the University of California at San Francisco and the University of of Southern California in Los Angeles. He has written and lectured extensively on the problems of critically ill patients.

He has been physician-in-chief of the Toronto Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital, dean and chair of the faculty of medicine, U of T, and U of T vice-provost. He also played a major role in the the establishment of the new Northern Ontario School of Medicine of Lakehead University and Laurentian University.

He has served on the boards of many hospitals and professional organizations.