Cornelius Rosse, MD, DSc
2022 AACA Honored Member
Cornelius Rosse, MD, DSc
Cornelius Rosse, MD, DSc, is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington. He received his medical education and training at the University of Bristol in England and, after joining the faculty of the Department of Anatomy, he was awarded a PhD degree for his research work in hematopoiesis and a Doctor of Science degree in biomedical informatics. He transferred to the Department of Biological Structure at the University of Washington in 1967, later becoming its chairman. He taught anatomy and embryology in a variety of courses to students and trainees in healthcare programs, ranging from undergraduates to surgical residents at the University of Washington and as a visiting professor at the Royal College of Surgeons (London). After being named “Outstanding Teacher” in five consecutive years in the UW School of Medicine, he was declared “Teacher Superior in Perpetuity” to open up the award to other faculty. Subsequently, he received the Distinguished Teacher Award of the University of Washington and of the American Association of Medical Colleges. He was appointed to the advisory board of the latter institution and served as a member and later as chairman of the Step 1 Test Development Committee of the National Board of Medical Examiners. He is an author of four textbooks and 10 electronic publications related to anatomy as well as of several journal articles concerned with anatomy education.
Over the years, Rosse’s research was supported by grants and contracts from the National Institutes of Health (National Cancer Institute and National Library of Medicine), the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense (Defense Advanced Research Agency or DARPA). Among the close to 200 publications resulting from this support some relate to cell production and differentiation in the immune and hematopoietic systems, while the majority pertain to biomedical informatics, an area in which Rosse has made his salient contributions. The latter entail the establishment of Structural Informatics (in partnership with James Brinkley), a subdiscipline of biomedical informatics, which addresses the challenges posed by the computable representation of the spatial and symbolic components of anatomical science. The spatial component was realized through the Digital Anatomist program, which pioneered the interactive 3D representation of parts of the body and served as the impetus for the National Library of Medicine’s Visible Human and DARPA’s Virtual Soldier projects. The Foundational Model of Anatomy represents the symbolic component of anatomical science as a principled ontology created and readable only through computational methods. It is the result of world-wide collaboration between anatomists, computer and information scientists, ontologists and philosophers. The FMA is distinct from traditional anatomical knowledge sources in that it serves as a reference ontology for application developers in clinical practice and biomedical research.
While his previous publications appeared predominantly in bioinformatics and AI journals, during his retirement Rosse is preparing contributions to Clinical Anatomy to promote the engagement of anatomists in the development of educational applications capable of supporting inference and reasoning.
