Editors' Note

Dr. Steven Goldring is also Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. Prior to this, he was a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Rheumatology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the past Chairman of the Research Committee of the National Arthritis Foundation. Goldring co-chaired the Keystone Conference on the Pathogenesis of Rheumatoid Arthritis. He is the recipient of the Paul Klemperer Award from the New York Academy of Medicine.

As Chief Scientific Officer, my role is to oversee the full spectrum of research activity at Hospital for Special Surgery, ranging from clinical research – outcomes research and comparative effectiveness research – to the very deep basic bench research.

Along that spectrum, there is a mix of basic and clinical research that falls into the category of translational research. My charge is to make sure that our research is of the highest quality and that it is sustainable in terms of being able to compete for peer review funding against the very top science going on across all different fields. We must also ensure that it is relevant, so that the people who are interested in philanthropy see that there is value in such research. Most importantly, we also make sure the research has applications that translate to making a difference in terms of patient care and outcomes.

The excitement for me is that this work focuses on the area of musculoskeletal research, because my whole career has been spent in studying and researching musculoskeletal problems, and in translating what I learned taking care of patients to what I do in the laboratory.•