Dr. Fred Aoki, professor of internal medicine, medical microbiology and infectious diseases, and pharmacology and therapeutics, is retiring this summer after 44 years of service in Manitoba.
Dr. Aoki grew up in Winnipeg. He earned his medical degree in 1966 from the University of Manitoba. He completed residencies in internal medicine and clinical pharmacology at McGill University/Montreal General Hospital where he became enamoured about two things in academic medicine – the first, RCT’s (randomized clinical trials) as the rigorous method for assessing drug efficacy and safety, and the second, clinical pharmacokinetics as an intriguing window to understanding why drugs caused the effects they did (both good and bad).
Dr. Aoki completed a three-year fellowship from the Medical Council of Canada, under David Tyrrell at the MRC Common Cold Unit in Salisbury, England.
He returned to Montreal for a third and final year of fellowship training at the Institut Armand Frappier in Laval and then returned to Montreal General Hospital to join the division of clinical pharmacology in the department of medicine and pharmacology at McGill University.
In 1978, he returned to Winnipeg and expanded his research interest in clinical trials and clinical pharmacology, working primarily with Dr. Dan Sitar.
Along the way, he won 13 teaching awards when there were two awards given by each class year, for best teacher and best clinician and served as assistant dean of admissions from 2001 to 2009.
Dr. Aoki is a beacon of academic medicine, a fantastic educator, dedicated clinician and a role model for generations of infectious diseases physicians.