Cheng-Mei Shaw Endowed Chair in Neuropathology

Est. 1999

The Cheng-Mei Shaw Endowed Chair in Neuropathology was established in 1999 to enable the University to attract and retain a distinguished faculty member in neuropathology, the study of diseases of the nervous system.

This endowment was initiated by Nancy D. Alvord and her husband, the late UW Medicine faculty member Ellsworth C. “Buster” Alvord, Jr., M.D., and their children and older grandchildren.

The chair is named after UW Medicine faculty member and long-time friend of the Alvords, Dr. Cheng-Mei Shaw. Now retired, Dr. Shaw’s interests included neuro-embryology, neuro-anatomy, neuro-physiology, neuro-pathology, neuro-immunology, neuro-radiology and neurosurgery. (He had a special interest in congenital malformations, infections, allergies, vascular diseases, traumas, brain tumors and neuro-degenerative diseases.) Given Dr. Shaw’s interests, it is the donors’ wish that the faculty member appointed to this chair should, ideally, have a broad view of the whole field.

Dr. Shaw was a valued colleague of Dr. Alvord’s for more than 40 years, and together they worked quietly, efficiently and effectively accomplishing most of the good things for which the laboratory of neuropathology has been noted in the fields of teaching, research and service.

Born and educated in Taiwan, Dr. Shaw came to the United States for residency training in neurosurgery (Lahey Clinic, 1954–55, Baylor University, 1955–58), and he was drawn into neuropathology in 1958 by Dr. Alvord, who sponsored his emigration to the U.S. in 1969. In another sign of the friendship between the two families, Dr. Shaw named one of his daughters Katharyn, a name that occurs in the Alvord family.

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