Dear Colleague: 

Welcome Class of 2029!
Last Friday was one of the best days of the year as we welcomed a new class of MD students to our school at the Matriculation Ceremony.

It is always an honor to join friends and family in celebrating the new class on their achievements and to let them know that we are here to support them through their medical school journey.

What an exceptional class!

We received more than 10,000 primary applications. Our admissions team interviewed 669 candidates to select our class of 184 students. They bring an impressive range of experience to our school, and we are excited for them to join the CU community.

In addition to receiving their White Coats, we also give each incoming student a new stethoscope. It’s an especially meaningful gift – a reminder to listen – that connects the class to our wider community of alumni and benefactors who contribute to purchase the stethoscopes.

We celebrated the new class with a round of speeches, including an outstanding keynote address by Alkesh Jani, MD, Professor of Medicine and the Renal Sectional Chief at the Rocky Mountain Regional Veterans Administration Medical Center, who encouraged students to relish the moment.

I told our new students that we at the school have an important assignment. “When you graduate, we want you to be the total package,” I said, highlighting that they will be “trained in tradition, prepared through excellence, compassionate in their caring, curious in their questions, and continuous in their improvement.”

We were fortunate to have many department chairs and school leaders who joined for the ceremony.

Full coverage is posted on the CU School of Medicine Matriculation 2025 webpage. Make sure you check it out.

Update on CU Medicine Bylaws
We are working on process improvements for School of Medicine faculty to get compensated for their valuable consulting work.

For legal consulting work, we are proposing changes that would make our school consistent with most other academic institutions by allowing faculty to pursue this activity at an individual level. Such work must be done on personal time and be consistent with existing university conflict of interest reporting requirements.

To make this change, CU Medicine Board of Directors earlier this month authorized referring a vote to CU Medicine members to consider amendments to its bylaws.

This would be a major win for our faculty!

Under this proposal, faculty who do legal consulting work would no longer be charged the 10% assessment by CU Medicine because I am agreeing to forgo that money supporting the Dean’s Academic Enrichment Fund.

In addition, the board approved a member vote on an amendment to its bylaws that would direct CU Medicine to explore the possibility of CU Innovations handling contracting for industry consulting. For consulting with industry, we are proposing changes that would empower CU Innovations to work directly with our faculty. We have offered these proposed changes to save money for our faculty practice administration and to ensure that we leverage the industry relationships CU Innovations has developed.

To take effect, these amendments require approval by a majority of the faculty who are members of CU Medicine, so faculty members should please watch their email for their opportunity to vote.

Upcoming Town Hall on Strategic Advancement
Please plan on tuning in for the CU School of Medicine’s virtual town hall on Wednesday, August 6, at 8 a.m. I will be joined by Naresh Mandava, MD, interim Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Advancement. We will provide important updates and share our vision for advancing philanthropy to sustain and promote our school’s mission. I welcome you to register for this online event and to submit questions in advance for Dr. Mandava and myself.

UCH OR Update
UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital (UCH) is making improvements in the capacity of its sterile processing department. Elective cases have been postponed for about a week to ensure that UCH can provide all emergent and urgent cases. I appreciate the flexibility and hard work of all our surgeons and proceduralists, especially Robert McIntyre, MD, Professor of Surgery, who have helped review cases and determine which can be safely postponed or moved to a different location. Leaders at UCH are working to return the SPD capacity and case volumes to normal as soon as possible and will be reaching out to patients with updates and to reschedule their cases.

VA Secretary Visits Campus
The Marcus Institute for Brain Health (MIBH) hosted a visit last week by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins.

Collins and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis met with Brig. Gen. Kathleen Flarity, DNP, PhD, Professor of Emergency Medicine and Executive Director of MIBH, and the MIBH team to learn about its integrated treatment program for patients with traumatic brain injuries. Secretary Collins and others toured the MIBH’s physical performance laboratory and creative arts therapy program.

Brig. Gen. Flarity said 79% of the patients served at MIBH are veterans. The facility does not require health insurance, and veterans and their families pay nothing out of pocket for the evaluation and outpatient programs.

“We know that the bigger our team, the more flexible and agile we are and the more throughput we can give,” she said. “Since I’ve been in my position (February 2024), we’ve increased our throughput by 39% in the number of patients served.”

Outstanding work by our team!

Pictured from left are Maj. Gen. Laura Clellan, Executive Director of the Colorado Department
of Military and Veteran Affairs; Brig. Gen. Kathleen Flarity, DNP, PhD, Executive Director
of the Marcus Institute for Brain Health; VA Secretary Douglas Collins; Gov. Jared Polis;
Joe Brennan, CEO of Avalon Action Alliance; Marcus Ruzek, Senior Program Officer
of the Marcus Foundation; and CU Anschutz Chancellor Don Elliman.

Faculty Updates

Eric McCarty, MD, Professor of Orthopedics and Chief of Sports Medicine and Shoulder Surgery, has been inducted as President of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine for 2025-2026. Dr. McCarty serves as the head team physician for the University of Colorado athletic teams and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche Hockey Club. The society is the premier global sports medicine organization representing the interests of 4,200 orthopedic surgeons and other professionals.

Susan L. Johnson, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics, and Director of the Children’s Eating Laboratory, has been awarded the Helen Ulrich Denning Award for Lifetime Excellence in Nutrition Education by the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior. The honor recognizes outstanding achievement in the field of nutrition education and behavior for leaders who have 20 or more years in the profession.

Amy Feldman, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, is this year’s recipient of the Mitchell B. Cohen Early to Mid-Career Leadership Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The award recognizes early- to mid-career faculty who are making significant impact in the field of pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition through leadership and/or advocacy. The award will be presented at a ceremony this fall.

Wendy Tzou, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Cardiac Electrophysiology Program, will receive support from the newly established Albinsson/Wahlstrom Endowment in Cardiac Electrophysiology Research. The Office of Advancement announced last week that Agneta Albinsson, PhD, and Mats Wahlstrom, inspired by Dr. Tzou’s compassionate and patient-centered care, made a generous $1 million gift to support the endowment.

Christian Mosimann, PhD, Johnson Chair and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, and Alexa Burger, PhD, Associate Professor of Orthopedics, have received a prestigious four-year NIH Office of Research Infrastructure Programs R24 grant to advance zebrafish transgenesis applications for biomedical research. Martin Breuss, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, is co-investigator on the work. The grant highlights the national and international visibility of CU Anschutz as an emerging major hub for using zebrafish as a powerful biomedical model to investigate early development as well as causes and mechanisms of human disease.

Recent Publications
Calen A. Steiner, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, is a co-author of a research article, “Recent evolution of the developing human intestine affects metabolic and barrier functions,” published July 17 by Science.

C. Neill Epperson, MD, Chair and Professor of Psychiatry, is a co-author of a special communication, “US Abortion Restrictions and the Neuropsychiatric Health of Pregnant Individuals and Families,” published July 16 by JAMA Psychiatry.

Nikhil Madhuripan, MD, Assistant Professor of Radiology, is corresponding author of an article, “Synthetic data trained open-source language models are feasible alternatives to proprietary models for radiology reporting,” published July 23 in npj Digital Medicine. Co-authors from our campus are Aakriti Pandita, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, and Angela Keniston, PhD, MSPH, Associate Professor of Medicine.

Donald E. Nease, MD, MPH, Professor of Family Medicine, is a co-author of an original investigation, “Emollients to Prevent Pediatric Eczema: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” published July 23 by JAMA Dermatology.

Healthcare Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative
Are you working on a discovery, idea, or research that could change lives? The HIE Initiative has been established to help you translate great science into direct patient impact. 

Part of CU Innovations, HIE is a new, campus-built hub to help faculty, staff, and students bring bold medical ideas to life. Designed around the realities of academic work, HIE offers mentorship, personalized education, funding opportunities, and access to strategic industry and investment partners—all focused on translating ideas into real-world patient impact.

As the federal funding ecosystem evolves, CU Anschutz is investing in new, diversified pathways to bring sustainable investment to campus. I’ve joined Chancellor Don Elliman and other founding shareholders from the School of Medicine and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in supporting HIE, which officially launches this fall. 

• Register to be connected with an industry mentor via the Mentor Program waitlist.
• Watch on-demand “Business of Science” webinars to learn about investment and collaboration opportunities, and stay tuned for upcoming live events.
• Follow the initiative on LinkedIn for more updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cu-innovations.

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 School of Medicine