Dean's Weekly Message
April 20, 2026
We distinguish our medical school from others with exceptional educational programs like our Climate & Health Program. We're excited to share a chance for our campus to participate in this award-winning educational opportunity.
Another mark of distinction for our school is providing transformational research. Jean Kutner, MD, MPH, was invited to share her expertise as a leader in hospice and palliative care research. We also have faculty making strides in their research on AI and bone imaging, new treatments for a rare disease, and transplant survival rates.
The stories we're sharing this week provide a snapshot of some of the many ways members of the School of Medicine are making discoveries and providing care that have a huge impact on patients' lives.
Free Training in Climate Medicine
Last week, Jay Lemery, MD, Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of the Climate & Health Program, updated the department chairs on an important opportunity for our faculty to extend our leadership in that critically important domain.
This fall, the program will offer our campus a no-cost certificate for CU Anschutz clinicians, educators, and health professionals. This hybrid, closed-cohort course covers essential knowledge in climate and health alongside advances in sustainability science. Participants will explore AI innovations in health care and the evolving impact of energy technologies and gain fluency in historic and current state and federal policies.
Departments are encouraged to support at least three faculty members. The deadline to register is June 30. Contact [email protected] with questions or to learn more.
As Dr. Lemery said during the meeting, the best time to invest is when others are too afraid to seize the day. We already have one of the best Climate Medicine Programs in the country, and this is a chance for us to expand the capacity of our educators.
If you need an incentive, you’d be signing up for free training from one of the premier programs in the country. Last week, our CU Diploma in Climate Medicine was named the 2026 winner of the American Climate Leadership Award!
Kudos to Dr. Lemery and to Bhargavi Chekuri, MD, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Diploma Director, and Shana Tarter, Diploma Managing Director, on this great honor.
Dr. Jean Kutner Discusses ASCENT Consortium
Jean Kutner, MD, MPH, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Chief Academic Officer at UCHealth, discusses a $64 million NIH grant that will transform palliative care across the lifespan on this two-part episode of the Anatomy of Leadership podcast.
Dr. Kutner is one of the nation’s leading voices in hospice and palliative care research, and in 2025 our school was selected as the prime award institution for this major NIH grant to establish a consortium focused on palliative care research. Dr. Kutner is a principal investigator.
The consortium, known as the Advancing the Science of Palliative Care Research Across the Lifespan (ASCENT) Consortium, includes four other academic centers across the country — New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing, Duke University School of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Personnel from more than 20 institutions are also participating.
In the podcast, Dr. Kutner shares how the consortium is breaking down long-standing silos across disease states, research disciplines, and care settings — creating a unified, trans-NIH strategy that connects researchers, clinicians, policymakers, and patients in unprecedented ways. From accelerating evidence into practice to reimagining care delivery models, the conversation highlights how the future of serious illness care will be shaped not just by innovation, but by intentional collaboration.
Brain-Computer Interface Surgery Highlighted in News Report
I highly recommend checking out this report on CBS Colorado about this breakthrough in neurosurgery here at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital. I mentioned the campus article in last week’s message, and this report is worth bringing to your attention too.
The patient, Brandon Patterson, is featured in the CBS report. Mr. Patterson describes how the procedure — a brain-computer interface implanted in the cortex levels of his brain — has affected his life.
“I could feel my fingers moving just on their own. Which was weird to say the least,” he says in the report. Patterson lost connection with the bottoms of his arms and his fingers in a motor-vehicle accident nine years ago that severed his spine. “I’m sitting here watching and nothing’s obviously moving, but I can feel all my fingers.”
Daniel Kramer, MD, Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery, and the team performed the surgery, implanting the technology in higher-level areas of the brain. As Dr. Kramer explains, “While most [brain-computer interface] procedures focus only on purely motor regions, implanting this device in higher level brain areas will offer new insights into how the human brain works during everyday thinking and movement.”
This amazing research is being conducted here and in collaboration with other leaders in the field. The research is supported by equipment and funding from Blackrock Neurotech and conducted under a consortium led by Richard Andersen, PhD, at Caltech, with Charles Liu, MD, PhD, at the University of Southern California. The experts also give a special thanks to David Bjånes, PhD, at Caltech and the many contributors who made this project possible
Featured News
In Bone Imaging, Machine Learning Accelerates Research Progress and Uncovers Hidden Patterns
In the future, artificial intelligence and its subfield of machine learning could help orthopedic physicians predict bone fractures in patients. In a new review published in Bone Reports, Michael A. David, PhD, instructor of orthopedics, explores that frontier, highlighting that machine learning may enable “agnostic, automated analysis that accelerates discovery and improve clinical bone diagnosis and treatment monitoring.”Dr. David hopes his work in the field and in developing tools — including SciNetX, a scientometric and bibliometric analytical pipeline and visualization software — also encourages the next wave of researchers interested in machine learning and orthopedics.
Read More About AI and Bone Imaging
Faculty and Resident Updates
Rita Lee, MD, Professor of Medicine and Associate Division Head for Education in the Division of General Internal Medicine, has been elected President-Elect of the Society of General Internal Medicine. SGIM has more than 3,300 of the world’s leading academic general internists, all of whom are dedicated to improving access to care for all populations, eliminating healthcare disparities, and enhancing medical education.
Marisha Burden, MD, MBA, Professor of Medicine and Division Head of Hospital Medicine, has been elected an At-Large Member of the Council of the Society of General Internal Medicine.
Olivia Rissland, DPhil, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, has received a grant from The G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation. Dr. Rissland’s project focuses on understanding how 2A peptides alter ribosome function to enable the production of multiple proteins from a single genetic message. This work seeks to answer longstanding questions in protein synthesis and could open new avenues for antibiotic development and next-generation genetic engineering tools.
Carina Venter, PhD, RD, Professor of Pediatrics, received the Allied Health Professionals Recognition Award at this year’s American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting in March.
Nida Awadallah, MD, Associate Professor of Family Medicine, has been named Teacher of the Year by the Colorado Academy of Family Physicians (CAFP). Dr. Awadallah received the honor at the CAFP Annual Summit on April 10.
Featured Events
Dean's Distinguished Seminar Series: Mitchell A. Lazar, MD, PhD
Tuesday, May 12, 3 p.m.
Hensel Phelps West Auditorium, Research 1 North
The School of Medicine proudly presents our next speaker in the Dean's Distinguished Seminar Series, Mitchell A. Lazar, MD, PhD, Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor in Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Lazar will present “Nuclear Receptors, Enhancers, and the Individual Predisposition to Metabolic Diseases.”
School of Medicine Hooding and Oath Ceremony
Monday, May 18, 10:15 a.m.
Boettcher Commons
The University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine Hooding & Oath Ceremony for the graduating MD class of 2026 will take place after the campus graduation ceremony.
Tattered Cover Talk
Wednesday, May 27, 6 p.m.
Tattered Cover Book Store, 2526 E. Colfax Ave.
Suzanna Kafer, PhD candidate, and Kristen Boyle, PhD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, will present “The Persistence of PFAS: How 'forever chemicals' slip into our lives, and into our cells.” The talk is free and open to the public and is part of an ongoing series offered by the Office of Research Education.
New Leader Orientation
Thursday, June 4
Anschutz Health Sciences Building
The Office for Faculty Development is hosting a full-day new leader orientation event designed for new Chairs, Vice Chairs, Division and Section Chiefs, Associate and Assistant Deans, and other newly appointed institutional leaders seeking to learn more about School of Medicine infrastructure and resources across the campus. Topics covered include research funding, relationships with outside practices, finance, faculty and staff support structures, appointments and promotions processes, philanthropy, and innovations. Register or nominate a new leader for the orientation. For questions, please contact [email protected].
Recent Publications
Matthew K. Leroue, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics; Brandie D. Wagner, PhD, Research Professor in the Department of Biostatistics & Informatics at the Colorado School of Public Health; and Lilliam Ambroggio, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics, are co-authors of an article, “Host–microbiome archetypes differentiate infection from pathogen carriage in the human lower airway,” published April 13 by Nature Communications.
Alfredo Ornelas, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and investigator with the Mucosal Inflammation Program, is corresponding author of a research article, “Metabolite mimicry identifies butyrate analogs with select protective functions in the intestinal mucosa,” published April 9 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Sean P. Colgan, PhD, Professor of Medicine, and 16 colleagues from our campus are co-authors.
Camille Hoffman-Shuler MD, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, is a co-author of an article, “Preventing Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Through Perinatal Mental Health Care,” published March 26 by Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Edwin Asturias, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, and Suchitra Rao, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, are co-authors of an article, “Estimating the generation time for SARS-CoV-2 transmission using United States household data, December 2021–May 2023,” published April 11 by Scientific Reports.
Melissa A. Kwitowski, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, is corresponding author of a quality improvement article, “Building a program to improve postpartum depression screening, triage, and referrals at a large birthing hospital,” published April 13 by the Journal of Perinatology. Allison G. Dempsey, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, and Sorabh Singhal, MD, Resident in Psychiatry, are co-authors.
Alfredo Ornelas, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and investigator with the Mucosal Inflammation Program, is corresponding author of a research article, “Metabolite mimicry identifies butyrate analogs with select protective functions in the intestinal mucosa,” published April 9 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Sean P. Colgan, PhD, Professor of Medicine, and 16 colleagues from our campus are co-authors.
Camille Hoffman-Shuler MD, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, is a co-author of an article, “Preventing Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Through Perinatal Mental Health Care,” published March 26 by Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Edwin Asturias, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, and Suchitra Rao, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, are co-authors of an article, “Estimating the generation time for SARS-CoV-2 transmission using United States household data, December 2021–May 2023,” published April 11 by Scientific Reports.
Melissa A. Kwitowski, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, is corresponding author of a quality improvement article, “Building a program to improve postpartum depression screening, triage, and referrals at a large birthing hospital,” published April 13 by the Journal of Perinatology. Allison G. Dempsey, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, and Sorabh Singhal, MD, Resident in Psychiatry, are co-authors.
Social Spotlight
What happens to the human body when we leave Earth? Arian Anderson, MD, assistant professor of emergency medicine, joined ABC News as a featured expert to share his insights on the physiological and psychological realities of spaceflight as the mission unfolded. Check out the full story on LinkedIn.
Follow CU Anschutz School of Medicine on Social Media
Announcements
Now Hiring: Chief Education Officer at Denver Health
Denver Health Medical Center has an opportunity for a Chief Education Officer to join the Denver Health team. The Chief Education Officer serves as the senior leader for Denver Health’s Office of Education, providing strategic direction and oversight for clinical education initiatives across Denver Health. The role works closely with the Chief Academic Officer and other leaders to develop the workforce of the future at a premier urban safety net system. Additional details are provided in the job listing.
Have a good week,
John H. Sampson, MD, PhD, MBA
Richard D. Krugman Endowed Chair
Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and
Dean, University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine
The Dean’s weekly message is an email news bulletin from John H. Sampson, MD, PhD, MBA, Dean of the CU Anschutz School of Medicine, that is distributed to inform CU Anschutz School of Medicine faculty members, staff, students and others about issues pertaining to the school’s mission of education, research, clinical care and community service.
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