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4 October 2023, “Sergiu T. Chiriacescu” International Conference Centre

On Wednesday, 4 October 2023, Transilvania University of Brașov conferred its highest distinction, the title of Doctor Honoris Causa, upon Mr. Peter Manu, Professor of Internal Medicine and Psychiatry, with an outstanding teaching and scientific activity, Professor of Medicine at Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, and Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Therapeutics.

A 1970 graduate of Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Bucharest, then an intern (1970-1972) and later a specialist doctor of Internal Medicine (1972-1975), he completed a residency in Internal Medicine at New York Presbyterian/Queens (1977-1980), being certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 1980.

He passed through all the didactic degrees, teaching as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York, Upstate College of Medicine of Syracuse (1980-1983), then moving to the School of Medicine within the University of Connecticut, as an Assistant Professor (1983-1989) and later as an Associate Professor (1990-1993). In 1994 he was appointed as an Associate Professor and in 2000 promoted as a Professor of Clinical Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He joined the relevant faculty of Hofstra University as a Professor of Medicine in 2010.

He started his scientific activity during his internship in the Medical Clinic of Floreasca Hospital, being part of doctor Arthur Karassi’s team, the latter in his turn Professor Iuliu Hațieganu’s accomplished clinician, student and collaborator in Cluj.

In the early 1970s, he studied catecholamines in acute myocardial infarction with Arthur Karassi and Constantin Gh. Dimitriu, in Bucharest; and in 1971 he published his first scientific article in the Journal of Internal Medicine. In the next 5 years, along with them, as well as with other team members, namely Mircea Drăganovici, Corneliu Zeană, Florin Gavrilă, Cezar Macarie, Nicolae Sitcai, Nicolae Chirculescu, he published 25 scientific articles.

In the same period, he collaborated with Dr. Karassi on the establishment of the first unit for the monitoring and therapy of coronary heart disease in the country, and on the elaboration of a vast monograph entitled “Acute Myocardial Infarction”, which was published by the Medical Publishing House in 1974.

His period of activity as a specialist doctor at Colentina Medical Clinic, between 1973-1974, was marked by medical personalities who impacted on him as a researcher in the medical field, namely the doctors and professors Mihail Constantineanu, Ioan Bruckner, Ștefan Berceanu, and Marc Steinbach. From Mihail Constantineanu he learned how to write science with accuracy, brevity and clarity.

In the early 1980s, he worked in Syracuse on the analysis of clinical decisions with Lorne Runge and Sheldon E. Schwartz; and, and since 1985, after a discussion with Lee Goldman, who was then a Professor at Harvard Medical School, and is now Dean of the School of Medicine within Columbia University, New York, he has been studying large groups of patients affected by severe health conditions, with clinical manifestations hard to diagnose and treat.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, he focused on chronic fatigue with Dale A. Matthews and Thomas J. Lane at the University of Connecticut, and developed what would become known in the literature as the Connecticut Chronic Fatigue Study. The results of the evaluation of 1,000 patients with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel and premenstrual syndrome were published in prestigious journals: Annals of Internal Medicine, American Journal of Medicine and Archives of Internal Medicine; moreover, they were each cited more than 100 times in other researchers’ scientific articles and were built on for achieving the first modern treatise on functional somatic diseases, published by Cambridge University.

In the 2000s, while conducting his activity at Einstein and Hofstra, he contributed to well-known studies on the cardiometabolic complications of antipsychotic drugs, together with Christoph U. Correll and John M. Kane; and the results were published in journals such as American Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry or JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association). One of the articles published in JAMA was cited over 700 times in Web of Science and over 1,100 times in Google Scholar.

Peter Manu is considered an expert in treating the medical problems of the patients with severe mental diseases. He authored the chapter “Medical Consultation in Psychiatry” in the last 4 editions of Cecil Textbook of Medicine (2008, 2012, 2016, 2020).

The books to which he contributed, including as an editor, and in which he tried to describe the problems at the border between internal medicine and psychiatry, include “Handbook of Medicine in Psychiatry” published by the American Psychiatric Press in 2006, later translated into Spanish and distributed in Spain, as well as Central and South America by Elsevier/Masson in 2007. The success of the book will also lead to its subsequent editions, specifically the 2^nd edition – 2015 with Karlin-Zysman C, and the 3^rd – 2020 with Karlin-Zysman C, Grudnikoff E as co-editors. Other books to which he contributed were published by prestigious publishing houses: Cambridge University Press, Haworth Medical Press, 2000, or Elsevier/Academic Press, 2016 (Functional Somatic Syndromes: Etiology, Diagnosis and Treatment, The Pharmacotherapy of Common Functional Syndromes: Evidence-Based Guidelines for Primary Care Practice, The Psychopathology of Functional Somatic Syndromes:Neurobiology and Illness Behaviour, Life-Threatning Effects of Antipsychotic Drugs).

Professional acknowledgement recommended him for the position of Director of Medical Services at Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Centre, University of Connecticut Health Centre, Farmington; then in New York, at Northwell Health, Zucker Hillside Hospital, Glen Oaks, and Northwell Health, South Oaks Hospital, Amityville.

As an acknowledgement of his academic and scientific activity, he was honoured with the Best Teacher Award 1983, Department of Medicine within the State University of New York at Syracuse, as well as with the Employee Excellence Award 2016 at Northwell Health – South Oaks Hospital.

His scientific achievements were acknowledged by the international community, being invited in doctoral committees within Danish universities.

Professor Peter Manu’s contribution to the development of education and scientific research in Transilvania University of Brașov is significant and includes his giving lectures as a guest at the MSPPS master’s degree study programme, conducting workshops for the doctoral students, or developing joint research with the academic teaching personnel of the Faculty of Medicine. Preoccupied with supporting young researchers and encouraging Romanian research, as a Fulbright specialist in Public/Global Health, in 2012 Professor Peter Manu came to Transilvania University of Brașov where, for a few weeks, he started collaborating and/or supporting several young doctoral students, several young members of the academic teaching personnel, today professors and doctoral supervisors within the Faculty of Medicine.

Professor Peter Manu’s academic path has been one worthy of a role-model for the medical staff trained in a higher education institution, who place emphasis on the patient. Furthermore, although he is not an alumni of Transilvania University, over the last years, he has proved to stand by the medical academic community of Brașov.