September 4, 2024

Dear School of Medicine Community,

As we get back into our regular routines that come with the new academic year, I want to thank everyone for all their hard work over the summer. While we had some time to rest, we still had a very busy and exciting season, and we’re geared up for another productive year. I can’t believe it’s already the beginning of my third year as Dean. I so appreciate the continued warm welcome, commitment to excellence, and our collective ambition to make an impact across the tripartite mission.

I just got back from Nigeria with Taofeek Owonikoko, MD, PhD, Executive Director of the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center; Shyam Kotillil, MBBS, PhD, Interim Director of the Institute of Human Virology; Man Charurat, PhD, Director of the Division of Epidemiology and Prevention at the Institute of Human Virology and Global Director of the Center for International Health, Education, and Biosecurity; Rebecca Nowak, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology & Public Health and Member of the Institute of Human Virology; and Clement Adebamowo, ChB, ScD, Professor in the Department of Epidemiology & Public Health and Associate Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center. We met with government officials and the Minister of Health, leaders of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, and the University of Abuja, and toured many hospitals in Abuja and Lagos. 

I was particularly impressed with the Institute of Human Virology in Nigeria, which is led by our own shared faculty members: Patrick Dakum, MBBS, MPH, Chief Executive Officer, IHV-Nigeria and Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology & Public Health; Charles Mensah, MBA, CPA, Chief Operating Officer of IHV-Nigeria; and Alash’le Abimiku, PhD, Professor in the Department of Medicine and Executive Director of the International Research Center of Excellence, IHV-Nigeria. The IHV-N has partnered with the University of Maryland’s IHV to screen more than 8 million people in Africa and treated almost 2 million patients living with HIV. We currently have 300,000 patients on active therapy in Nigeria alone. We visited sickle cell and oncology programs and discussed how we can leverage our 25 years of partnership with Nigeria to extend our collaborations in hopes of addressing the “epidemics” of non-communicable diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and sickle cell anemia. 

Back on the home front, I announced several leadership changes in the last couple of weeks: we will welcome two new institute leaders – Kelly Dunn, PhD, MBA as our inaugural Director of the Kahlert Institute for Addiction Medicine, and Elana Fertig, PhD, who will serve as our next Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences. Dr. Dunn is one of the nation’s leading experts on opioid use disorder. She is currently a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine with a joint appointment in Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. She has been the Principal Investigator on projects totaling more than $21 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health and has authored more than 130 peer-reviewed publications in the area of substance use and opioid use disorder. Dr. Fertig is internationally recognized for her work in integrating spatial multi-omics technologies with mathematical models to develop new predictive medicine paradigms in cancer. She too will join us from the Johns Hopkins University, where she is currently a Professor of Oncology, Applied Mathematics & Statistics and Biomedical Engineering. She additionally serves as the Co-Director of the Single Cell Consortium as well as the Co-Director of the Convergence Institute and the Associate Director of Quantitative Sciences at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. With over 130 research publications, she is currently a principal investigator or core lead on several National Cancer Institute consortia grants, and a co-investigator on several other major grants totaling more than $30 million. I am extremely grateful to Jacques Ravel, PhD, for his committed and visionary leadership as Acting Director of IGS over the past two years and look forward to new exciting leadership opportunities for him in the School of Medicine in the near future.

I want to extend a warm welcome to our new Chair of the Board of Visitors, Michael Greenebaum. We are very grateful to Cynthia Egan who served as Chair for five years, and has been on the board since 2013, and we look forward to Mr. Greenebaum’s leadership!

While several new leaders have come on board, we are also saying goodbye to a few, including Jay Magaziner, PhD, who is stepping down as Chair of the Department of Epidemiology & Public Health, but thankfully remaining as a faculty member. Under Dr. Magaziner’s leadership, EPH has been a consistently top ranked and integrated department and expanded to include the campus-wide Program in Health Equity and Population Health and the Center for Innovation in Diagnosis, as well as the Center for Research on Aging, and the University of Maryland Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center. Elias Melhem, MD stepped down as Chair of the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine. During Dr. Melhem’s tenure as Chair, the department progressed with several initiatives to increase their clinical capacity, and achieved a 15-fold increase in NIH research funding over 10 years. I am very grateful for their service and commitment to the School of Medicine over these many years.