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Letter from the Dean

April 2025

In late January, I had the pleasure of delivering my first State of the School address where I outlined my plan for our school to be Top 10 in 10 years. 

Our remarkable Anschutz Medical Campus offers us a strong start. We have dedicated faculty and staff, we have strong clinical and philanthropic partners, and we have a laser focus on providing quality care. We will achieve our goal by working together to build programs of excellence in clinical care, research, and education. 

During my address, I featured several examples of ambition, courage, compassion, and innovation that distinguish us from other institutions. 

Kia Washington, MD, Professor of Surgery, is leading a national research team studying how to perform whole eye transplants to restore vision. Her work on this project is featured in this issue of the magazine. 

CU Cancer Center members Dan Pollyea, MD, MS, Christine McMahon, MD, and Jonathan Gutman, MD, treated college football coach Matt Lubick, for acute myeloid leukemia. Their care matched with Lubick’s determination – he literally walked a marathon in the hallways of UCHealth University of Â鶹´«Ã½¸ßÇå Hospital on his first day of chemotherapy – were featured in a Fox Sports report last fall. 

Prem Subramanian, MD, Professor of Ophthalmology, is collaborating with Allie Hayman, PhD, from CU Boulder’s Aerospace Engineering program, to research the impact of space flight on the eyes of astronauts. 

In another cross-campus collaboration, Michael Zuscik, PhD, and Karin Payne, PhD, both from Orthopedics, have joined with Stephanie Bryant, PhD, a materials scientist from CU Boulder, on a government-funded effort to develop bioengineered therapies for osteoarthritis. 

The address was a momentous occasion to celebrate these and many other outstanding successes. It is also an important time to focus on how we can build from them. To achieve our goal of being Top 10 in 10 years, I have established nine new committees, led by department chairs, to help us with several major initiatives that are key to our future success. 

The assignments cover all aspects of our operations. We will be reviewing our clinical work, ensuring that we are smart in how we manage our funding and that we are sustainably implementing our growth plans. 

We are also putting a focus on setting and adopting data standards that help all of us better monitor the progress we are making in achieving our goals. 

It is critically important that we reward our teams for their attention to every detail, so we’ve also established committees focused on building a collaborative culture, overseeing strategic hiring processes, and raising the voice of the talented advanced practice professionals on our team. 

I am very excited to lead the high-performing teams making these changes to our school. We have significant work to do, but I am confident that working together we will achieve our ambitious goals and ensure that Anschutz Medical Campus remains a place where dreams come true.

With warm regards,