David Lee Lark is an American physician, medical researcher, and entrepreneur whose work has ranged from emergency medicine and urology to research on uropathogenic Escherichia coli. His scientific career included Stanford-based studies of bacterial adhesion, urinary-tract infection, and vaccine development, alongside later medical and business leadership in California.
Background
David Lee Lark was born on August 7, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois, to Stanley LeRoy Lark and Rosalie Phillips Lark. His documented professional identity is associated with medicine, biomedical research, and entrepreneurship in the United States.
His later research connected clinical urology with microbiology and infectious-disease investigation. At Stanford, he participated in studies of bacterial pili, adhesion, hemolysin production, and the mechanisms by which uropathogenic Escherichia coli colonize the urinary tract.
Education
Lark earned a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry with honors from San Diego State University in 1970. The university, founded as a normal school in 1897 and later incorporated into the California State University system, developed from teacher education into a comprehensive public university with strong scientific and professional programs.
He received the Doctor of Medicine degree from Northwestern University in 1974. Northwestern's medical school, established in Chicago in the nineteenth century, formed part of the city's major academic medical environment. He later completed a Doctor of Philosophy in medical microscopy at Stanford University in 1987, extending his medical training into laboratory-based biomedical investigation.
His postgraduate work at Stanford included residency training in surgery and urology, postdoctoral work in urology, and a fellowship in medical microbiology. Stanford University, founded in 1885 in California's Bay Area, became a major center for biomedical research and interdisciplinary work during the period in which Lark trained there.
Lark began postgraduate clinical training at Stanford University, progressing from surgical residency to chief residency in urology between 1975 and 1980. He continued at Stanford as a postdoctoral fellow in urology from 1980 to 1983 and as a fellow in medical microbiology from 1982 to 1984. His Stanford research was conducted in collaboration with the medical school and the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Medical Center, where investigators studied bacterial virulence and urinary-tract infection.
During the early 1980s, Lark co-founded Syn-Tek in Sweden and served as its vice chairman and president from 1984 to 1986. Syn-Tek's research activity was associated with molecular studies of bacterial adhesins and uropathogenic Escherichia coli. Lark was a co-author of studies examining Gal-Gal-binding pili, bacterial adhesion, hemolysin-associated traits, and the molecular basis of urinary-tract pathogenicity.
His research included a 1985 New England Journal of Medicine article on Gal-Gal binding and hemolysin phenotypes and genotypes in uropathogenic E. coli. He also contributed to work on immunization against experimental pyelonephritis and to patent activity concerning chemically defined vaccines against urinary infections.
Lark subsequently worked in clinical and organizational medicine in California. He served as director of emergency-room services at John C. Fremont Hospital from 1987 to 1988 and at Corcoran District Hospital from 1988 to 1990, while also serving as regional director of Valley Emergency Physicians from 1988 to 1990 and its secretary in 1989. He became a partner in Corcoran Community Medical Group in 1990, served as chief of medical staff at Corcoran District Hospital in 1991, and was associated with the East Valley Youth Clinic in San Jose as medical director from 1978 to 1981.
His later entrepreneurial and professional activities included founding Central Standard Time in 1984, serving on the executive board of the Society for Basic Urologic Research from 1988 to 1989, consulting for Invest Urology Journal, advising a urinary-tract-infections committee of the National Institutes of Health in 1983, and serving as secretary for a 1985 meeting of a European microbiological society in Sweden.
Lark contributed to biomedical research on uropathogenic Escherichia coli, including studies of bacterial pili, adhesins, hemolysin-associated traits, and the molecular mechanisms of urinary-tract infection.
He contributed to experimental vaccine research directed at preventing E. coli pyelonephritis and to patent work concerning chemically defined vaccines against urinary infections.
Works
book chapter
Protein-carbohydrate interactions in biological systems: the molecular biology of microbial pathogenicity
(Contributed to a scholarly volume on protein-carbohydrate...)
1986
Uropathogenic Escherichia coli: Molecular mechanisms of adherence
(Co-authored a chapter reviewing molecular mechanisms by w...)
(Named as a co-inventor on a patent concerning a receiver ...)
2022
Membership
Lark's documented professional memberships span medicine, chemistry, microbiology, scientific advancement, management, and urologic research. They include the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemists, the American Society for Microbiology, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Society for Basic Urologic Research, the American Management Association, and King County Medical Research.
American Medical Association
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United States
American Association for the Advancement of Science
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United States
American Chemical Society
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United States
American Institute of Chemists
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United States
American Society for Microbiology
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United States
New York Academy of Sciences
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United States
Served as a member-at-large of the executive board from 1988 to 1989.
Society for Basic Urologic Research
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United States
American Management Association
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United States
King County Medical Research
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United States
Connections
Lark is the son of Stanley LeRoy Lark and Rosalie Phillips Lark.
