njms people…do you know? PET RO S LEVOU NI S, M D
A Sense of Place The new chair of the Department of Psychiatry came to NJMS in early 2013, ready to implement many fresh, new ideas for mentoring and educating the next generation of psychiatrists. BY EVE JACOBS
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thens, Greece. Birthplace of Plato; democracy’s launch-pad; home to ancient architectural masterpieces, among them the Acropolis and the Parthenon; site of the first “modern” Olympic Games; incubator for intellectual ideas and the arts. Piraeus, Greece (a port in Athens). Birthplace of Petros Levounis; city where his father, an internist and asthma specialist, and mother, a nurse, met, married, raised a family, and practiced together in a home office
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for five decades; site where their young son was first introduced to and gradually became enamored of the world of medicine, particularly psychiatry—the small portion of his father’s work that he found “so fascinating”; home of the prestigious high school where Levounis first made his mark as a student. Stanford, California. Next stop on the young man’s life-journey; home to Stanford University, where Levounis earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a master’s in
biophysics; location of Stanford University School of Medicine, where he completed two years of his medical studies, spending the summer in between in Oxford, England, researching how social class impacts patient-physician relationships, earning a co-terminus master’s in sociology. Place where his own personal journey dictated that he take a break from medical school because of a “loss of direction” and a need to put life in perspective during those dark years of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Home to the Medical College of Pennsylvania, where he returned to school with newfound selfawareness, earning an MD and finding his career-direction. New York, New York. Final leg in his educational odyssey, where Levounis trained in Columbia University’s psychiatry residency program, winning the National Institute of Mental Health Outstanding Resident Award
JOHN EMERSON
