Memorial Service for Dr. Thomas Detre Set for June 5 in Heinz Memorial Chapel

Thomas Detre

A memorial service celebrating the life of Dr. Thomas Detre will be held at 1 p.m. Sunday, June 5, in Heinz Memorial Chapel. Dr. Detre was the academic leader whose ambition and determined efforts helped propel the University of Pittsburgh’s schools of the health sciences to international prominence and the architect behind the transformation of the University’s teaching hospitals into UPMC.

Dr. Detre was 86 years old when he passed away Oct. 9, 2010, following a long illness. Since 2004, he had held the titles of Emeritus Distinguished Senior Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences and Emeritus Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.

During Dr. Detre’s tenure as the University of Pittsburgh’s senior vice chancellor for the health sciences, he established an innovative funding cycle of driving dollars from clinical practice into interdisciplinary research and then applying the results of those endeavors to clinical advances. This approach led to the growth of the University’s medical arm and the ultimate realization of what is now UPMC, and it positioned the University to become one of the nation’s top 10 recipients of research support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a status it has maintained since 1997.

Memorial donations may be made to the Katherine Detre Scholarship Fund in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health.

For more information, contact Apryl Eshelman at 412-624-5639 or Eshelman@pitt.edu.