Ronald Sokol Named Chief Scientific Officer, Child Health
April 2022
Ronald J. Sokol, MD, has been named Chief Scientific Officer, Child Health, for the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, effective May 1, 2022.
The newly created position is responsible for building and coordinating child health research activities on campus, developing strategies to deepen and broaden our scientific programs and the core services supporting them, developing faculty retention and recruitment strategies, and defining strategic and operational priorities for child health research.
Sokol will mobilize campus research resources and technologies to better understand the biological causes of diseases that affect infants and children, and which may extend into adulthood. In collaboration with leaders from the School of Medicine, the Anschutz Medical Campus, and Children’s Hospital Colorado, he will help guide basic, translational, clinical, and population health research activities related to child health.
Sokol, professor of pediatrics, has led the National Institutes of Health-funded Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CCTSI) since 2008. At the CCTSI, Sokol and his team have been responsible for overseeing the implementation of programming supported by more than $187 million in National Institutes of Health funding. He will remain director of the CCTSI.
“As the leader of the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, Dr. Sokol has demonstrated a commitment to collaborative research, dedication to clinical care, and a passion for community engagement that provides a solid foundation for this important new leadership role on the Anschutz Medical Campus,” said Dean John J. Reilly, Jr., MD. “We look forward to the vision he will provide as Chief Scientific Officer, Child Health.”
Sokol co-founded the Pediatric Liver Center – one of the first pediatric liver centers in the United States – to integrate high-quality multidisciplinary pediatric hepatology care, including pediatric surgery and nutrition, with clinical and translational research. In addition, Sokol has chaired the NIH-funded Childhood Liver Disease Research Network, a network of 14 leading centers in North America studying nine rare childhood liver diseases, since 2002.
A major focus of Sokol’s research has been defining the causes, development, best management strategies, and outcomes of infant and childhood liver diseases. He has run a basic science laboratory for more than 35 years, and led translational and clinical research related to pediatric gastroenterology and hepatology, publishing more than 280 original articles and 125 book chapters or review articles. Sokol holds five patents related to the use of antioxidants in the treatment of cholestasis, and his research discoveries have changed the way cholestasis-induced vitamin E deficiency in children and adults is diagnosed and treated.