Dean's Weekly Message

I am pleased to announce that Brian Smith will be joining us as senior associate dean for administration and finance for the University of Colorado School of Medicine and executive director of CU Medicine, effective August 1. Brian will be succeeding Jane Schumaker, who has served in both roles since March 2011 and who announced last year that she planned to retire when her successor was hired. Brian most recently has been the senior vice president and chief operating officer for Mount Sinai Doctors and senior associate dean for clinical affairs for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Prior to Mount Sinai, he was executive director of USF Physicians Group from 2000-2005 and executive director of Rush University Medical Group from 2005-2016. We are grateful for Jane’s distinguished and effective leadership during the past eight years and we are confident that Brian will strengthen our faculty practice and the School of Medicine. I also would like to express my appreciation to all members of the search committee, which was chaired by Naresh Mandava, MD, chair of ophthalmology, for their dedicated effort reviewing and interviewing the many highly qualified candidates who were interested in this critical role.

The CU School of Medicine Center for Women’s Health Research and UCHealth on Tuesday, June 4, hosted 50 girls from across the Front Range for the fifth annual Girls’ Career Day. The girls, who are high school age, were offered opportunities to learn from and interact with health care professionals and researchers across campus in surgery, communications, endocrinology, psychiatry, dental medicine, and pharmacy. Neill Epperson, MD, chair of psychiatry, offered inspiration by sharing the story of her upbringing, her education, and her career path, and provided helpful insights to the girls. The girls also participated in activities and talked with staff and leadership about programs at the School of Medicine, the Physician Assistant Program, the Colorado School of Public Health, the School of Dental Medicine, and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. The event was a great way to inspire the girls to consider a career in health care and another opportunity for the Anschutz Medical Campus to share its resources with the community.

Congratulations to the team of researchers from the CU School of Medicine and Denver Health, who were recently awarded a five-year, $11 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study complications related to blood coagulation and inflammation in patients who have sustained severe traumatic injuries. The grant goes toward a collaborative effort of six principal investigators: Chris Silliman, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics; Ernest E. “Gene” Moore, MD, Distinguished Professor of the University; Kenneth Jones, PhD; associate professor of pediatrics; Kirk Hansen, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics; Angelo D’Alessandro, PhD, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics; and Mitchell Cohen, MD, professor of surgery. The grant will build on work done by the Trauma Research Program, which for more than two decades has played a pivotal role in defining basic mechanisms for post-injury biology and physiology.

A team of researchers from the School of Medicine are authors of one of the top downloaded articles to appear in The Journal of Immunology in 2018. The article, A Beginner’s Guide to Analyzing and Visualizing Mass Cytometry Data, is by Professional Research Assistant Abigail K. Kimball, Department of Anesthesiology; Professional Research Assistant Lauren M. Oko, Department of Immunology and Microbiology; PhD candidate Bonnie L. Bullock, Department of Medicine; Raphael A. Nemenoff, PhD, professor of medicine; Linda F. van Dyk, PhD, associate professor of immunology and microbiology; and Eric T. Clambey, PhD, assistant professor of anesthesiology.

The School of Medicine welcomed the CU Physical Therapy Class of 2021 at a professional oath ceremony on Thursday, May 30. With 71 students enrolled in the 2.5-year curriculum, these students are highly accomplished and the most diverse group admitted to the program in the past five years. We welcome them to the CU Anschutz Medical Campus and look forward to their contributions to patient care and medical knowledge.

The Child Health Research Enterprise May 2019 newsletter has been posted online. The newsletter reports that co-chairs for committees for phase 2 have been named. The goal of phase 2 is to more closely review legal, space and facilities, finance and budgeting, and communications of our research efforts.

The Gates Center for Regenerative Medicine has opened its call for applications to the Gates Grubstake Fund, which provides multiple awards of $350,000. Applications for the fund are due Monday, August 26. Award recipients will be announced in December. Investigators are encouraged to apply if their programs fall within or adjacent to these fields: treatments, diagnostics, devices, and tissue engineering. For more information, visit the Gates Grubstake Fund application site, and for questions, email heather.callahan@ucdenver.edu.

Have a good week,

John J. Reilly, Jr., MD
Richard D. Krugman Endowed Chair
Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and
Dean, School of Medicine