Faculty & Staff

Dr. Michael D. Lockshin
(Director - Barbara Volcker Center)
Dr. Lockshin graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School; he did his residencies at Second (Cornell) Medical Service at Bellevue Hospital and Memorial-Sloan Kettering Hospital, and his rheumatology fellowship at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. A member of the faculty of Cornell Medical College and a staff rheumatologist at Hospital for Special Surgery and New York Hospital from the 1970s to 1989, he became Extramural Director, then Acting Director of the NIH’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases in 1989. He returned to Hospital for Special Surgery in April 1997, and is now the director of the Barbara Volcker Center for Women and Rheumatic Disease at Hospital for Special Surgery and professor of medicine and obstetrics-gynecology at Weill-Cornell Medical College. He is the author of nearly 300 research papers, book chapters, and books, most on the topic of lupus, pregnancy, antiphospholipid syndrome, and sex differences in disease.

Dr. Doruk Erkan
(Associate Physician and Scientist - Barbara Volcker Center)
Dr. Erkan received his medical degree at Hacettepe University School of Medicine in Ankara, Turkey. After his Internal Medicine residency at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, he completed his Rheumatology fellowship at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. Dr Erkan is an Assistant Attending Rheumatologist and Clinical Researcher at Hospital for Special Surgery and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He has a long-standing research interest in the field of autoimmune diseases, with particular focus on the antiphospholipid syndrome and lupus. Dr. Erkan has received several honors and awards from the American College of Rheumatology and the Arthritis Foundation for his research. He has published over 70 articles including research papers and invited editorials, as well as 15 book chapters, and he has given over 100 presentations. He is the co-editor of the Neurology volume of the Handbook of Systemic Autoimmune Disease and the Associate Editor of Hospital for Special Surgery’s Manual of Rheumatology and Outpatient Orthopedic Disorders.

At Hospital for Special Surgery, the Barbara Volcker Center collaborates with other centers in the Hospital, as well as with the research department's appropriate clinical trials. The center draws together investigators from different sites and different disciplines to focus on rheumatic disease issues relevant to women.