Message From the Chair
As of Labor Day this year, UCSF opened its first purpose built ambulatory surgery center, Bayfront. This state of the art $400M building has 16 operating rooms including two robot rooms and all of the other expected state-of-the-art surgical equipment at our Mission Bay Campus, across the street from the Golden State Warriors stadium. Talk about a great parking space for sporting events and concerts! On the fourth floor of the building, we have OHNS clinical office space to accommodate our departmental growth. This includes space for clinics in laryngology, voice and swallowing, otology/neurotology and audiology, rhinology, and facial plastic surgery.
If you stop by Parnassus, you will see that we broke ground on our new hospital that is due to open in 2030. Lots of heavy equipment is present as they drill out the foundation. This is a $4.5B project and it is really exciting to see the progress every day.
Four new faculty began their academic careers in the department. Mary Xu, MD, MSCE is a head and neck oncologic and microvascular reconstructive surgeon, Ilya Likhterov, MD is a head and neck oncologic and microvascular reconstructive surgeon, Nikki Jiam, MD is an otologist/neurotologist, and Kara Brodie, MD, MPH is a pediatric otolaryngologist. We have several open searches for clinical positions, and several new scientists for whom we are searching including in auditory central processing and cancer research. Of course, we have a fresh cohort of residents and fellows whom you can read about within this newsletter.
Residency interviews this year will be in person for UCSF. Steve Pletcher, MD and VyVy Young, MD continue to be engaged in national educational policy. See the editorial that Steve and his co-authors wrote in the September issue of Laryngoscope.
I hope to see you at one of the upcoming UCSF CME meetings: our UCSF/Penn Sleep Apnea course is Presidents Day weekend in Orlando, Florida and the Pacific Rim Otolaryngology Update course with Tripler Army Hospital is February 14-18 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Please check on our website for the Boles Lecture, the Schindler Lecture, the Morrison Lecture, and the Sooy Lecture: https://ohns.ucsf.edu/events
Warmly,
Andrew H. Murr, MD, FACS
Professor and Chair
UCSF Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery