Professor of Medicine
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Dr. Adolf W. Karchmer, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, is a member of the Infectious Diseases Division, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He was the founding Chief of the Infectious Diseases Division at the Deaconess Hospital (Boston) and subsequently Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center following the merger of the Beth Israel and Deaconess Hospitals in 1996 until 2008. Karchmer received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Karchmer's major research efforts have focused on infections of the cardiovascular system, foreign device infections, and infections in patients with diabetes. For a decade he was the site principal investigator for National Institutes of Health funded AIDS Clinical Trial Group and for the Bacterial and Mycoses Study Group. He served as an Associate Editor for Clinical Infectious Diseases from 2000-2016 and was on the Editorial Board of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Karchmer served on the Council of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and as President of the Massachusetts Infectious Diseases Society. He was and founding member and formerly President of the International Society for Cardiovascular Infectious Diseases. He was also a member of the American Heart Association Ad Hoc Committee on Rheumatic Fever, Endocarditis and Kawasaki Disease as well as the Ad Hoc Writing Committee on the Treatment of Endocarditis. He served on the Infectious Disease Society of America guideline committee for Diabetic Foot Infections and Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Infections. He has published over 275 original articles, book chapters, and editorials in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.