A senior executive at the huge drugmaker Eli Lilly is decamping to become executive dean for research, a newly created position, at Harvard Medical School (HMS), the school announced today.

William Chin, a Harvard-trained endocrinologist, has been at Indianapolis-based Lilly since 1999, most recently as senior vice president of discovery and clinical research and earlier as vice president of discovery biology research and clinical investigation.

But he is decidedly a product of Harvard, where he entered the medical school in 1969. He completed his M.D. there before training at several Harvard teaching hospitals, including Beth Israel Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. He was later on the faculty at yet another Harvard-affiliated institution, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has also been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

The HMS dean, Jeffrey Flier, wrote in a letter announcing the appointment that Chin “will spearhead efforts to design and implement a vision for research at HMS,” where he will have “overarching responsibility for biomedical research”.

Flier added that Chin will “develop a coherent strategy for the School’s scientific interactions with industry, ensuring it is both aligned with the HMS Faculty Policy on Conflicts of Interest and Commitment and is capable of advancing critical unmet needs”.

“There are very few people capable of rising to such a challenge,” he proclaimed.

The appointment was not, however, music to all ears. Arnold Relman, a professor emeritus of medicine at Harvard and a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, told the Boston Globe that he found Chin’s selection “puzzling”.

“Does this appointment signify that Harvard Medical School intends to even further strengthen its research ties to the pharmaceutical industry?” Relman told the newspaper. “If so, I think many people will worry that the separate roles for academic medicine and drug companies are becoming more confused, leading to more conflicts of interest.”

Harvard has suffered unwelcome scrutiny from US Senator Charles Grassley in recent years for the failure of some of its faculty to fully report their income from the pharmaceutical industry. See, for instance, this thorough article by the New York Times. Chin’s new remit sounds not unlike the job recently filled by David Korn, another Harvard University and Harvard Medical School alum. Harvard University — as distinct from the medical school — hired Korn as vice provost for research late in 2008, within months of Grassley turning his spotlight on Harvard.

At the time, Korn was given “broad responsibility for the review, development, and implementation of policies related to the conduct of academic research, especially in the sciences, and to aspects of the University’s relations with industry.” Korn, a former Stanford Medical School dean, had served for ten years in senior roles at the Association of American Medical Colleges. Part of his task at Harvard has been to “sustain sound and appropriate relations with industry and with private and government agencies involved with academic research” and to “review existing institutional policies bearing on the conduct of research”.

Chin will assume the new job on 1 May.